How to catch the lost leads of your leaking funnel

Your funnel is leaking

The marketing dept undertakes many enterprises to generate leads:
Trade shows, email campaigns, web seminars, …

After they have qualified the leads, they are handed over to the salesmen.
Typically the salesmen hardly take time to look or to use these leads. Only a minority of all those qualified leads will ever really be taken care of by the salesmen as these leads are not “theirs” but from “them” (marketing).
Thus the great funnel is leaking leads massively.

Even when a lead is being pursued by the salesman, it can be forgotten as:
- The opportunity seemed lesser
- The disconnect between salesman and lead contact
- The contact was not available to talk
- No meeting could be setup
Many more reasons to forget about the lead than reasons to follow-up on the lead.

There are 2 solutions:
- Plugging the leaking funnel with a lead management system
- Improve the lead qualification

Lead management system

A lead management system can be considered by the salesmen as invasive or disturbing as it will send out reminders by email.
Salesmen will find ways around these systems and avoid using it.
As an example: they will call the lead and find out immediately there is no real demand. Done.

Salesmen will prove they are wasting their time with the leads from marketing.
Still a lead management system can help as leads won’t get lost of forgotten.

Improve lead qualification

Increasing the lead quality by a better qualification will the lower number of leads and they become more interesting to have a look at. This will persuade the salesmen to invest their time.
Salesman needs to invest his time to make his sales.
His time is limited capacity and he needs to maximize it in order to make the most sales.
He decides the type of risks he takes by spending his time on certain leads or not.

Newsletters

Every lead generated should receive the company newsletter in order to keep communicating, just in case the salesman isn’t communicating.
If the salesman hasn’t followed up, maybe the lead will make contact again after reading the newsletter.

Promotions

Similar with promotions: send the leads the promotions in order to keep them interested and continue the communication.
It is possible they will contact your company again for getting the benefit of one of the promotions.

Visiting company alerts

Whenever a company (qualified as lead) visits the website, the salesman should receive an alert.
A company visiting means the company is interested and the salesman should take advantage of this knowledge.
The service should also indicate the interest for products or services.

Conclusion

Applying all these solutions will minimize or plug the leaks in your funnel.

How leaky is your funnel ?
How do you plug the leaky funnel ?