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How to Optimise your Lead Gen. & Sales Process

We’ve mentioned it several times throughout this article series, but we’ve also decided to dedicated a separate topic to it: measure and record your results and so you see your progress and improve over time. In this article we’ll revisit the four stages of the lead generation and sales process and outline some metrics you should be measuring and optimising for each.

  • Reaching the market
  • Generating interest
  • Capturing leads
  • Turning leads into sales

We’ve separated this article into the four stages of the lead generation and sales process, however, they shouldn’t be viewed in the isolation of their stage. You need to optimise your funnel as a whole. For example; there’s no point getting a better deal on traffic that doesn’t convert.

Reaching the Market

Related: How to Reach your Target Market

The main objective here is to get in front of your target market and have them notice and engage with you. The way in which you measure this is going to depend on where you are reaching your market.

Online – Your Media

  • Number of impressions (views) of your ads, listings and posts designed to bring people back to your website or other media e.g. search engine listings (results), advertisements, social posts
  • Number of clicks/visitors to your website or other media from ads, listings, posts, links etc.
  • Click through rate (number of clicks / number of impressions)
  • Advertising cost – cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
  • Other view/impression metrics – podcast downloads, video views, ebook downloads, slide deck views etc.
  • Outbound email – open rates

Online – External Media

  • Number of impressions/views of your external media – might have access to this directly or might have to ask the third party media owner for this data
  • Click through rate from external media back to your media
  • Advertising cost – cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), effort/opportunity cost of work you put in to this promotion type

Offline

  • Audience/impressions/views – TV audience, radio audience, print circulation/readership
  • Distribution – number of flyers, brochures etc. given out, posted or taken
  • Conversations – number of people talked to
  • Word of mouth – difficult to measure but keep an eye on it for signs that it is happening
  • Phone calls – number of calls made, number of phone conversations

Generating Interest

Related: How to Generate Interest

The objective here is engagement with your content to show that your visitors have interest and its building as they interact with your information and media.

Online – Your Media

  • On your website – time on page, bounce rate, heat maps, click maps, social shares, comments
  • Other media – video plays, video play depth, podcast plays, quiz/poll completions
  • On your social profiles – views, post comments, post likes, post shares
  • Live conversations – conversations started, length, type of conclusion
  • Email – number of incoming emails, reply rate, length of exchange

Online – External Media

  • Page with information about your business and offering – stats will be limited compared to your own website but might including views, interactions e.g. likes, shares, clicks to call, clicks to reveal number, incoming calls on tracked number, form fills
  • Other websites/media types – whatever of the above data you can get from the website owner or discover through other sources, visitors to your website, direct contacts via external media
  • Advertisements/remarketing – number of visitors back to your media (use ‘you media’ metrics above to measure what these visitors do next), contacts directly from ads e.g. on tracked numbers

Offline

  • Conversations – length of conversation, level of interest
  • Advertisements/your market materials – engagement resulting from ad including walkins, calls, emails (switch to online media metrics to see what these people do next)
  • Presentation – number in attendance (and number that stayed until the end), resulting conversations, number of interested questions, number of market materials distributed afterwards, resulting calls/web visits etc. from the presentation

Capture Leads

Related: How to Capture Leads

This is the stage where people give permission to be contacted again and therefore becoming a lead.

Volunteer Contact Details

  • Number of form fills
  • Optin form – optin rate/conversion rate – the number people who optin / the number of people who view the form or page
  • Number of social likes/follows
  • Cost per like/follow – Facebook has this metric, other platforms might have something similar
  • Number of people who volunteer contact details through other mediums e.g. in person

Call and Indicate

  • Number of people who call and indicate they’d like further contact
  • Ratio of people who call and indicate to total number who call

Indicate Interest After In-Person Visit

  • Number of people who indicate they’d like further contact
  • Ratio of people who indicate to total number who interact in person

Indicate Interest After Outbound Call or Email

  • Number of people who indicate they’d like further contact
  • Ratio of people who indicate to total number you call or email
  • Ratio of people who indicate to total number who reply to or show interest in your initial call or email

Via Third Party

  • Number of leads obtained
  • Cost per lead
  • Quality of lead – are they interested and engaged when you contact them?

Making Sales

Related: How to Turn Leads into Sales

The final step in our process (apart from this one) is to make the sale. As explained in our main article on this topic, your sales process is likely to contain several parts for which you should be recording and optimising your results.

Lets look at some metrics specific to the selling medium/s you are using.

Website / webpages

  • Number of sales
  • Number of ‘add to carts’
  • Number of checkouts
  • Number of shopping cart abandons
  • Ratio of sales to ‘add to carts’
  • Ratio of sales to checkouts
  • Content engagement – time on site, bounce rate, social shares, comments, clicks, downloads, plays, registrations
  • Number of people moved to the next stage such as calls, emails, live chats, demos, free trials, use of product in free trial
  • Ratio of people moved to the next stage

Conversation

Including: manual email, private messaging, phone conversation, in-person conversation

  • Number of questions asked and responded to
  • Length of conversation
  • Number of people moved to the next stage e.g. meeting or sale
  • Ratio of people moved to the next stage

Email Marketing, Marketing Automation & SMS

  • Number of email opens, email open rate
  • Number of unsubscribes, unsubscribe rate
  • Number of clicks through from website, click through rate
  • Engagement from emails including replies, downloads, time on site, bounce rate, social shares, comments etc, engagement rate
  • Number of people moved to the next stage
  • Ratio of people moved to the next stage

Snail Mail

  • Engagement from mail outs e.g. replies, phone calls, walkins
  • Subscriber numbers
  • Unsubscribe numbers
  • Number of people moved to the next stage
  • Ratio of people moved to the next stage

Events

Including: offline and online, webinars, trade show, conference, demo, presentation

  • Number of expressions of interest
  • Number of registrations
  • Registration ratio
  • Number of attendees
  • Attendance ratio
  • Engagement at event – questions asked, stayed til the end
  • Number of people moved to next stage
  • Ratio of people moved to next stage

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of this series on lead generation and sales. We suggest you go back and review each stage in details with the metrics outlined here in mind.

You can find a bunch more information about these topics in our resources section and blog.

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