A New Lead and What to Do
A lead is someone who has expressed interest in your business and what you offer. It is your business’ responsibility to determine if they are qualified nor someone your team wants to work with. The way you handle communication and interaction with your lead can make or break whether they become a prospect. The key is to be as helpful as possible, respect your time and value, focus on their needs and how they match or mismatch with your services, and don’t let emotions blur your vision and decision making.
It is your business’ job to make sure you attract and retain the right customers and leave unqualified leads feeling they were heard, which still converts them to a raving fan. To ensure you provide the best experience to the lead and your team, you want to create a lead process. This process should include sample scripts for inbound phone calls, email reply templates for inbound emails, a meeting outline and questionnaire to remove emotion and ask the right questions, and a list of criteria to qualify the lead. Most importantly, you want to clarify and document what course of action is done for a qualified and unqualified lead.
Benefits
New leads are potential clients or raving fans. Their experience should be consistent and pleasing. You should also protect your business from attracting and on boarding not-fit clients. In order to do this, you must have a predictable process in place for handling each lead. When you do this, you:
- Save time to talk with qualified leads
- Avoid the trap of giving out free advice
- Provide the ability and guidance to weed out unqualified leads
- Create a better experience for all parties
Exercise
If you seek a Lead process, download the Excel templates below. If you use Redtail CRM, download the Redtail Workflow form and we will add the workflow template to your Redtail.
Reflect and Prioritize
Once the lead enters your world, their experience will determine if they become a client and/or raving fan. You must keep building trust while being clear about your services and who you want to work with. The technique to achieve success is to team-build and use processes to create trust, clarity, expand your brand, and protect your team’s time and business profitability.
Please remember to add any new epiphanies and ideas to your Master Plan of Ideas and Initiatives.