If You Don't Want Leads, Your Marketing Is Broken

I heard something interesting on a call with Pete the other day. He said one of the members in his mastermind does not want leads. He’s not interested in lead generation for his business. He only wants customers.

I doubt this business owner is alone. In your business, do you want leads or do you only want customers?

In my mind it’s a huge red flag if you do not want leads at all. That means an important piece of your marketing system is broken and I’ll explain how to fix it in this article.

Why Businesses Do Not Want Leads

We’ve all read studies that show people who inquire about products or services tend to make a purchase in the not-too-distant future. That’s the big argument for follow-up marketing. We know this, but businesses still say they do not want leads! Why?

Well if you’re involved in sales, then you know most leads do not convert into customers. It’s just the nature of the game. And it can be physically and mentally draining to comb through your list of “leads” each and every day praying for one to close.

Typically there’s a love-hate relationship with leads. Every new lead comes with a rush of excitement like opening up a gift. But then as the lead “ages” and does not buy right away, we tend to lose interest like children discarding old toys in favor of the new shiny object.

Leads can equate to frustration and failure, which is the main reason why businesses don’t want them in the first place. But the solution to not generate leads is ridiculous! That’s not solving the right problem.

The Real Problem Is Your Marketing

The real problem is that you do not have a practical, working marketing system to follow-up, nurture, and convert leads into customers. If you had a system, then leads wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, with proper tracking and a good marketing system, you can actually put an average dollar amount on each and every lead that comes into your sales funnel.

With technology today, the system can (and should) be almost completely automated using tools like Infusionsoft or AWeber. Both can be set up to automatically follow up with leads via email and send alerts to your sales team to make calls or send letters. This sort of automation makes leads a whole lot less frustrating because you no longer need to manually do a lot of the repetitive work.

Let’s say you do this, and you find that every lead who requests some information online is worth $5 to your business. What happens then if you can advertise and generate a lead for $3? Instead of advertising to generate sales immediately, you advertise to generate leads via an online request form. If that’s the case, then you just opened up your sales funnel… and you can profitably scale up advertising and grow your business so much faster!

Remember, if you’re down on lead generation, then that means your marketing is broken. Create an effective marketing system with automated follow-up, and you’ll see leads in a whole new light.