The sales person with the 50% conversion rate is by far the better sales person. Indeed, the first sales person, with the 10% conversion rate may well be a liability. It would be much more productive to give her leads to your good sales person. This is the way to think about your own leads.

Plan how you will manage each batch of leads and set your targets in terms of conversion rates. Set a target of –

* How many leads you will convert to contacts
* How many contacts you will convert to clients

Managing your Sales Leads

To manage your leads effectively there is a useful model called the Sales Cycle. This gives us the stages from lead to advocate.

1. Leads
2. Contacts – we make contact with the decision maker, perhaps on a telephone call or casual meeting
3. First Contact Meeting – our first sales presentation meeting, where we build rapport, establish needs, present our offering and, hopefully, close a sale
4. Active Prospect – we have met, and the prospect may buy, but hasn’t made the decision yet
5. Client – the client buys from us
6. Advocate – the client is so pleased they recommend us to others

The idea is to work at each phase to improve our conversion rate and effectiveness at sales. The more leads we convert to contacts, the bigger the pool we have for the next phase. Work conversion rates for each phase of the cycle.

Improving your Conversion Rates

We improve our conversion rate at each phase of the Sales Cycle by using skills, recording and tracking systems, and good motivational techniques. Above all, every good sales person plans HOW they will improve each week and each month. As well as managing the normal weekly activities, they focus on an improvement area so that they are constantly increasing their potential.

For example, you could concentrate one week on improving the first phase of the Sales Cycle, generating more contacts from your leads.  Isolate a time for making appointments. Prepare a list of contact names and telephone numbers, and anything else you will need to carry out an effective period of calling. Set a target of number of dials, or number of contacts or number of appointments made. Work out how you will motivate yourself to keep going till you achieve your target. After the batch of calls, review your performance, and use this review to plan your next session.

Spend the next week focussing on improving your recording and tracking system, with the target improving the conversion from your Active File to Clients. A good sales professional is always working at his or her role and is always working at improving. aidim.