Supercharge,Your,Lead,Engine,T DIY Supercharge Your Lead Engine!

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

Therefore, you should continually evaluate your lead generation program to ensure that it meets these seven criteria:1.You use conversion ratios to continually monitor results at every step of the process and to refine the lead program to produce greater results.2.The system produces a high percentage of qualified leads.3.You follow up all leads, except those that are obviously unqualified.4.You contact all leads by email, phone, mail, or a personal visit, in a timely manner (preferably within 24 hours).5.The inbound lead flow is balanced by territory, sales reps, and product line.6.You produce inquiries/leads at a reasonable average cost.7.You capture all information generated from inquiries and subsequent follow-up immediately (and preferably automatically) in a database system.One of the great benefits of creating an efficient lead engine is that it will allow you to precisely measure your cost of acquisition. When you know what it costs to bring in a new customer, you can then focus on lowering this cost while simultaneously increasing the average sale amount. By manipulating these two levers, you can vastly increase your company's success. Think of the end-to-end marketing and sales process as an assembly line. You need to carefully monitor every step of the process, from generating raw inquiries through building repeat clients. Formulas called conversion ratios are used to measure what percentage of leads survive each step and move closer to becoming customers. If your conversion ratios are on target, your entire program will produce the intended results. But just like any process on the assembly line, if any of your conversion ratios are out of whack, overall output is negatively impacted. For example, if you generate 100 raw leads from a particular marketing program, and fifty survive the initial screening step to earn the designation suspect, the conversion ratio of raw leads to suspects is fifty percent. Likewise, if twenty of these fifty suspects are turned into qualified leads, the conversion ratio of suspects to qualified leads is forty percent. And if five of these twenty prospects become customers, the conversion ratio of prospects to customers is twenty-five percent.Conversion ratios will differ depending on your industry, product or service, the type of prospects with whom you are working, and such factors as seasonality and the economy. The important point is to work and rework these numbers to increase the conversion ratio at each step. After you have a handle on your realistic ratios, you will know exactly how many raw leads need to be fed into the system on an ongoing basis to achieve your objectives.By using conversion ratios, it is easy to demonstrate that a company can use its lead generation system to increase the number of new customers in three ways. Option one is to funnel a larger number of raw leads into the system, while maintaining the same conversion ratios. Option two is to improve one or more of the conversion ratios, while maintaining the same number of raw leads entering the system. Option three is to do both. Use Fusion Marketing to Supercharge Your Lead EngineFusion Marketing can best be described as optimizing and synchronizing your key resources in such a way to create a greater and more powerful whole. Whenever I use the Fusion Marketing methods to evaluate a company's lead generation program, I first look for the underperforming parts of the process (weaknesses in the assembly line) and then help them fix these areas to create a well-oiled lead engine. I also believe it is important that marketing and sales establish a service level agreement (SLA) that quantifies:•Number of qualified leads required•Time period in which these leads will be generated•Criteria of qualified leads•Pipeline coverage needed to meet sales objectivesYou'll need to negotiate the specific lead engine numbers as well as the specifics of what constitutes a qualified lead. As for pipeline coverage, it is important to discover how many potential dollars of revenue you need in active sales engagements to achieve a specific amount of revenue. As I mentioned above, to be considered an opportunity there must be a dollar amount of potential revenue assigned. Over time, you will find that your company needs X amount of total dollars in the pipeline to generate Y amount of revenue. For example, if you find that your sales reps need to be working $4 million worth of opportunities to achieve $1 million of revenue, then your pipeline to sales ratio is 4 to 1. Remember that this is another conversion ratio and if you can lower this ratio to 3 to 1, then the same $4 million in the pipeline will lead to $1.33 million in revenue. Unlike their less-informed counterparts, Fusion Marketers understand the basics of sales forecasting and pipeline management.