Day 16

Fine-tune your sales machine!

Buyers want to know you’ve got systems in place to keep generating leads and then efficiently convert as big a percentage of those leads as possible into sales – and they’ll want to be confident that those systems will keep on working after you’re gone.

Think about the marketing channels your business uses at the moment – adverts, brochures, your website, social media, and so on; how much do these cost to operate? Are cheaper, yet possibly more effective channels available? You should know how many leads each of these channels generates so you can work out the cost per lead from each channel; and what about the conversion rates from leads to sales – do some channels have better rates than others?

Your CRM system can be used to measure all of this. You can use it to release pre-programmed emails, send out newsletters, remind existing customers that it’s six months since they last bought from you, and so on; bear in mind that the average business needs to make contact between seven and nine times with prospects before they’ll buy! So, having a sales process that incorporates regular contact with potential customers is pretty important.