How to Track Your Leads to Increase Your Sales Success

Sales leads are not typically covered in sales training books or courses as thoroughly as other parts of the sales process such as closing the sale.  Every sales process begins with generating leads, so the more you know about sales leads, the more profitable your small business can be. 

How many leads did you get last month? Most people can answer that question with a handful of leads that have high potential or resulted in a sale, but a large number of potential leads fall out of the process, sacrificing possible sales. 

What’s the big deal?  The more you know about your leads the more successful your business will be, because generating leads is the first step to making sales.  And, if you can use your newly found information to either reduce the cost of your marketing or the time that you spend, wouldn’t that be worth it? 

Your first action plan is to create a way to track key information about the ways that you generate your leads.  Here are some things to consider: 

1. Where do you first generate your leads from? A “pre-lead” is really just a prospect, for example a website visitor or someone you shake hands with at a meet-up group.  Note those places that you pick up prospects, for example your website, advertising, networking events or tradeshows.

2. What “specific sources” do your leads come from? Organic search, PPC, a specific networking event, another website, response to a blog post on someone else’s blog, or a specific advertising campaign are all examples of specific lead sources.

3. How would you rank the quality value of each of those leads from your source and specific source?  I have found that this is easiest to derive by assigning a percentage value to every lead received from a source.  So, if a lead actually results in a sale, it receives a higher percentage value than one that expressed interest but didn’t get past the proposal stage.

Once you know where your best leads originate, you will find you are able to spend your marketing dollars and your time much more efficiently. 

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