Bad leads. Not enough leads. Leads that aren’t actually leads.
If you are struggling with generating leads and filling your business’s pipeline, you are not alone. Keeping a healthy flow of new leads coming in is one of the largest challenges for most companies.
Below are 10 common mistakes that lead to trash leads!
- You are targeting the wrong prospects. – Who do you work with? If you aren’t targeting the right people, you’re not going to get good leads. Developing a buyer persona can help your team understand who buys from you, what they buy from you, and why they buy from you.
- You bought your list. – It can be tempting to purchase a list from a trade organization or advertising firm, but most of those lists’ contacts are likely bad. Don’t be surprised when your campaigns sent to a bought list produces poor results.
- You aren’t tracking leads correctly. – To understand trends in your lead quality and sources, it’s critically important that your CRM data is accurate. If your team is not diligent in tracking lead data in your CRM, you’ll miss out on this important information.
- You’re incentivizing the wrong behavior. – Incentives matter. And when you pay your team “per lead” versus “per qualified lead”, you are opening the door to many trash leads. Make sure you are ONLY paying a commission on leads that are QUALIFIED.
- Marketing and sales aren’t aligned. – Your sales and marketing teams need to be aligned with each other. This means understanding your buyer, sales campaign cadence, content strategy, and sharing of common business development goals. Misalignment will cause low quality and quantity of leads.
- Your positioning is wrong. – You might be attracting the wrong kind of lead with your brand positioning. If you are not clear in your message about what you do and who you do it for, you might have unqualified buyers reaching out to you.
- You are focused on your product, not your buyer’s problem. – Your buyers are actively trying to fix their problems. When you are leading your prospecting campaigns with your product, it’s likely to fall on deaf ears.
- Your calls to action are uninspiring. – Every webpage, email, direct mail piece, etc., should feature a relevant and visible call to action. If you are not inspiring action, you are missing the opportunity to advance a lead forward.
- Your business listings aren’t optimized. – Your company pages on LinkedIn, Google My Business, trade groups, chambers of commerce, etc., should be optimized for lead generation. If they are not set up correctly, you could be missing out on leads or attracting the wrong ones.
- Your salespeople are transactional. – Are your sales reps providing value in their sales process? Are they growing their professional networks? Are they strategic and consultative? Or are they just focusing on transactional sales? A transactional sales approach is not only going to generate fewer leads, it will lower your chance of closing those few leads you do get.
