Sales Lead Leakage #1: You fail to sell to 100% of the sales leads you don’t follow-up.
Jul 04, 2021
Lack of follow-up by sales reps is the number one failure for lead generation campaigns. If salespeople can’t do it, get a marketing automation program.
Unless the potential customer is willing to over-look the lack of follow-up and buy without hearing from a salesperson (usually B2C sales leads) your company has a huge sales lead leakage issue and you're failing.
Industry stats, articles, research and pundits report a 75-90% failure in sales lead follow-up by most companies. This isn't a minor leakage issue it is a massive problem because it says that the marketing failure is in direct portion to the lack of sales lead follow-up.
The stats people keep quoting are 45% of the salespeople give up after the first phone call. Here are a few things I teach sales reps:
-Nearly half of all sales leads turn into a sale for someone.
-75-90% of all inquiries and leads are not followed-up by anyone in sales.
-Faster follow-up wins out over slower follow-up
-The most enduring fact of sales lead closure: Persistence always wins over those who give up after the first call.
Salesperson follow-up is preferable to just having a marketing automation push (yes, I understand the concept of sales ready leads and I prefer it). But considering most salespeople never follow-up inquiries and leads, marketing automation with its defined rules and persistence pushes win rates up for every company that uses it.