Most sales training books and courses spend a lot of time on closing the sale, but very little time is spent on discussing the leads that, well, lead to those sales.  The sales process begins with generating leads, so it is important to understand as much as you can about them in order for your business to be as profitable as possible. 

Can you count the number of leads you received over the past 30 days? 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.  Would you find it worth it to learn something more about your leads if you were able to cut the time you spend getting leads, or even better marketing costs? 

The first step is to establish a system to track identifying information about your lead generating activities.  Here are a few areas to start analyzing: 

1. What main sources did your leads come from? Before you have a lead, you only have a prospect, that is a website visitor or attendee from a networking event, for example.  Identify your main sources for gathering prospects, such as the Internet, trade shows, networking events, or direct advertising.

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. Finally, what is the quality value for each of the leads you receive from those general sources and specific sources?  The best way I have found to pinpoint this is to assign a percent value to each lead.  For example, 10% for a suspect (not even really a lead yet); 25% for someone who is actually interested and you’re talking more; 50% if you’ve issued a proposal and 100% if you closed the sale.

Understanding where you are getting your leads and the quality of those leads will help you to spend your marketing time and money in the right places to increase your profits. 

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