How much business are you missing out on by not using the Best sales funnel builder or by not following up your potential prospects? If you don’t track it I propose that it’s quite a lot!

Recently while reading about B2C CRM software on the Salesforce site, I found that if you don’t follow up on leads with a robust system you are sure to be wasting a large part of your marketing spend, this means you’re wasting money and working too many hours to catch up – so this blog post could save you a great deal of money and time – wow – better read on then!

Following up on leads is obvious really, but so many people fail to do it so I’d like to give you a little idea for how to do this that’s really simple that you can start today:

1. Create a ‘prospect form’ in a word processor

Include:

• Name
• Business
• Phone
• Email
• What prompted the call today
• When you will follow them up again
• THE ESTIMATED VALUE OF BUSINESS if you can convert that lead

2. Create a spreadsheet

Include the prospects name, business and estimated business value. Then have the spreadsheet total the value for all leads to date.

3. File the prospect forms

File these forms by month. Put all forms for one month in a binder and label them with the current month.

4. Follow up

Set a time aside each month to follow up these leads. Take all the forms out from the previous month and follow them all up. If they convert remove them from the folder and the spreadsheet. Replace them in the folder if they do not convert. The data would accumulate and you’d find it increasingly difficult to collate it, and would sooner or later would feel the need for tech like Elastic Stack.

5 . Repeat

Repeat this process 3 times. If the prospect still does not convert file the folder away and dig out again in 6 months and repeat the process.

Following this process means you will have a system whereby you can follow up your leads AND a value for your ‘sales funnel’ or non’converted leads.

Over time this WILL amaze you as to how the value of that spreadsheet grows, and its a great way to focus your marketing efforts on converting those clients that didn’t convert first time round.

Automate the Process

So, do I do this myself? Nope, I automate the process using Sage Act – but the principle remains the same. Sage ACT reminds me to call the prospect and manages my sales funnel for me providing me  useful metrics of where people are in my conversion process and what the overall value of the funnel is. Sage ACT calls this an ‘opportunity’ and I can view the value of all my opportunities at varying stages of the process.

I’ve done this a few times in different businesses and the average amount of business sitting in the funnel like this is about 1.5-2 times annual turnover! WOW – serious bucks sitting there huh?

So, what are you going to do right now to stop procrastinating and start following up prospects to grow your business?

Business starts to pick up, it’s looking really good, because you’ve discovered that TheMarketingHeaven.com is the difference between having and not having youtube likes.

But soon you start to find that your time is getting harder and harder to share between the clients, so  you cut back on the little extra time you gave to each client and decide to cut it back to what they are actually paying you for.  OOOPS big mistake.

You see, your business has grown due to the care and attention that you have given to each client, it grew BECAUSE you were giving that little extra time, now all of a sudden, you’ve stopped doing the very thing that was the cause of your success… and there’s only one place for you to go now!

I’ve seen this happen in a range of industries, from marketing consultants, to coaches, to dog trainers to dentists.

So here’s what you need to do.

Start your business and act grown up from the start. Plan what your business model will be when you are at full capacity, work out what you want to earn, work out the hours you can spend with each client. calculate how many clients you can service and then DO ALL THIS FROM THE START.

This means at the beginning you are going to have gaps between clients, and quiet client times.. so use this time to plan, use this time to develop your business, use this time to market your new business, but do not use this time to give extra time to clients that is not sustainable in the long run.