Drive Business to your Site – Then Convert the Leads

You do all the right things: you drive business to your site; you capture data and follow visitors around your site via a digital footprint; you know who has been looking at your site and what their interest are; you have folks who attend your webinars and buy your white papers.

We have fabulous technology these days. Almost anyone, regadless of the size of their company, can get their name and business proposition out there for the world to see.

But are you closing the commensurate amount of business? If not, why not? Are you not managing your leads properly? Converting properly? I regularly hear complaints from marketing folks that they bring in the leads but the sales folks aren’t converting them.

The problem is this: any sort of selling tool – lead gen and digital body language included – does nothing more than capture names, and potentially do some form of needs assessment and some form of solution placement/pitch or product presentation.

There is no available lead gen technology that actually goes behind-the-scenes with the buying decision team to help them navigate their internal decision issues (relationship problems, old vendor issues, initiatives, etc.) and actually make the decisions that would push the ‘buy’ button. Knowing everything about the customer (which is of course impossible) still does not get that button pushed.

As sellers, we have pushed great data and understood needs forever. But that doesn’t give us a sale. Why do we continue to assume that doing more and more than to ‘capture date’ or ‘understand the customer’ or ‘position solution data’ will close sales?

In the history of sales, this thinking has merely worked a small percentage of the time – hence we close approximately 7% of our sales. Folks claim that with the new technology they can get higher numbers. That has yet to be proven to me. But there is a larger question: Why do we persist on ignoring the need to actually help buyers navigate through their off-line, private decision issues – you know, the ones that have little to do with their need or our solution? Why do we not recognize that this part of the buying decision process must be/can be added to the sales model?

Sales doesn’t get you there. Why not use what will. Learn Buying Facilitation™ and add the front end to your lead gen technology. Because unless you do, you’ll be sitting with huge amounts of data and names, and not enough closed business.

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3 thoughts on “Drive Business to your Site – Then Convert the Leads”

  1. Great thinking here. There are so many pieces to the puzzle and so many things to consider that people are scared to approach any one part of it. Each step in the process – getting visitors, educating them, converting them – takes strategy and persistence. Tackling even one aspect is always better than doing nothing but if you're not achieving the thing you set out to do, then your effort is wasted.

  2. Thanks for your comment, Josh. I”m actually recommending something a bit different. Our current model of getting visitors, educating them, and converting them omits a capability to actually help them make the internal, off-line decisions they need to come up with that sales doesn't help manage. At all. Sales isn't there at their meetings. Sales doesn't sit in with two department heads discussing budget.
    I'm suggesting that you add a Buying Facilitation(R) initiative in additional to the tools and techniques you use as sellers. Until or unless buyers manage the hidden, off-line internal stuff, they won't take the final step which is the purchase (remember that a purchasing decision is the last decision made and we enter too early).
    You are thinking sales. The sales model doesn't handle the decision issues that are private and idiosyncratic.

  3. Thanks for your comment, Josh. I”m actually recommending something a bit different. Our current model of getting visitors, educating them, and converting them omits a capability to actually help them make the internal, off-line decisions they need to come up with that sales doesn't help manage. At all. Sales isn't there at their meetings. Sales doesn't sit in with two department heads discussing budget.
    I'm suggesting that you add a Buying Facilitation(R) initiative in additional to the tools and techniques you use as sellers. Until or unless buyers manage the hidden, off-line internal stuff, they won't take the final step which is the purchase (remember that a purchasing decision is the last decision made and we enter too early).
    You are thinking sales. The sales model doesn't handle the decision issues that are private and idiosyncratic.

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