How to get more ROI from your lead generation

Lead generation is a fundamental part of every business, ensuring the sales funnel is well populated with fresh lead opportunities. This inevitably requires a considerable investment of time and money.

However, even with the best lead generation process in place, a staggering 80% of these leads are often wasted and not followed up - meaning organisations aren’t getting the best possible return on investment or results.

This is because lead generation is only part of the process. And a robust lead qualification process, that passes the hottest leads straight to sales and triages the rest can dramatically increase sales.

Why does lead generation wastage happen?

Typically leads are generated at the beginning of the sales cycle where prospects express an interest in some way. This could be through marketing automation, engaging when you have exhibited at a trade show or exhibition or requested literature or downloaded content from your website.

Out of all the generated leads, only a small portion of around 20% will be considered hot leads to follow up. These are the prospects who show clear buying signals, such as a request for a quote or proposal, that indicate an immediate need and a higher potential for converting into a sale. Understandably, sales teams will put their core focus into these prospects with negotiating quotes, meetings and contractual agreements to turn them into paying customers.

But what happens to the remaining 80% of the generated leads that didn’t have an immediate need? In many situations, these remaining leads are overlooked or dismissed because they’re in the early stages of the buying process and sales people don’t have the time to nurture them.

This is where lead generation wastage happens. This assumption that no immediate need means no future sales opportunity results in many potential prospects being squandered. Granted not every one of these leads will convert, but without taking the time to filter and qualify them, you won’t know which ones are worth following up with and nurturing.

Challenges of lead generation wastage

One of the main issues with these remaining prospects is that for busy sales teams with targets to meet, these slow-burning leads often don’t offer enough short-term reward to be pursued, as they’re unlikely to contribute to their current sales targets any time soon.

This doesn’t mean that they hold no value at all though. They just require a different approach to the hot 20% leads generated as they pose different challenges, including:

Less engaged: having only expressed a mild interest in your products or services, it’s fair to say this audience is slightly less engaged and is going to need a tenacious approach to reach them. This could mean you may need to ring and email multiples times to reach them, which just isn’t viable for a time-poor salesperson.
No immediate need: in the early stages of engagement, they don’t have an immediate need, so it can be difficult for salespeople to identify where they are on the customer journey and the most appropriate course of action to take.
Lapsed time: realistically these prospects will be pushed to the bottom of the pile. And if they’re not followed up promptly and tenaciously, there’s a good chance that they won’t remember what it was that piqued their interest and why you’re now bothering them when you do speak to them.
Language barriers: this all presupposes that you and your potential customers speak the same language, which is not always the case in global organisations. If you don’t have salespeople in place who speak their language it can be even harder to nurture them and promote engagement.

As a result, almost all the potential opportunities represented by these remaining generated leads are going to waste.

How to maximise your ROI on generated leads

So, we’ve discussed why lead generation waste happens and the challenges that these potential prospects pose, but now it’s time to look at how you can avoid these pitfalls and get more value from all the leads you generate, not just a small percentage.

At The Call Business, we create efficient contact strategies that qualify, engage, triage and nurture these types of prospects that are designed to:

Qualify out the time wasters.
Engage with the viable contacts and identify the possible future opportunities.
Nurture them, keep in touch with them, make them feel valued and turn them into prospects that will flourish into clients, when it’s the right time for them.

And here’s how we do it…

We’re part of your team

We act as an extension of your team. At the outset, our business developers learn about your products, your markets, your USPs. We become familiar with your FAQs. We work to a brief not a script, so we can have natural, authentic conversations with your prospects. Working globally, with a team of native-speaking business developers in 20+ languages, we can engage your customers regardless of their nationality.

We identify where they are on their customer journey

Using gentle qualification questioning, we can establish where each prospect is on their customer journey and the most appropriate next steps.

We recognise buying signals

Through our experience, we know that when potential customers start to ask really technical questions, those are buying signals, and that is our cue to hand them over to you. Once their questions are answered, if their need isn’t immediate, you can elect to hand them back to us for nurturing or continue the dialogue yourself if you have the capacity to do so.

Our sole focus is your future pipeline

Your assigned business developers aren’t distracted by face-to-face meetings, interrupted by having to write proposals or presentations and they don’t have to deal with new clients. Our team’s focus is always and entirely on managing this pipeline of future prospects for you.

We offer flexible lead qualification resources

You can contract us for as many or as few days per month of our services as you need. And you can dial that level of service up or down without any HR issues and no arguments about headcount.

What ROI can this approach deliver?

At TCB, our lead qualification and customer nurturing is a tried-and-tested approach, meaning that our clients have benefited from extraordinary results, such as:

Our lead nurturing was directly attributed to a six-fold increase in new project value for a large scientific and medical components manufacturer.

In nine months, we engaged a pool of unqualified prospects to deliver 474 hot leads to a market-leading gas analysis supplier.
In six months, we booked 86 meetings for a client, which generated 36 deals and enabled them to exceed their revenue target by 1000%.

When you invest in generating leads, no matter what channel you use, you need to get the maximum ROI from your investment. So, to wring every last bit of value from your investment, let’s have a quick chat to explore the options.

Because, whatever percentage of prospects you initially convert, over time with our help, this could be so much more.

Lead qualification and nurturing is not all we offer. You can see our full range of our services here or drop an email to info@thecallbusiness.com to arrange a call to discuss your needs.

Beating Sales Lead Wastage to Increase ROI