Marketing for the Future

Do you know from whence your customer comes? You should. Do you know how much it cost to get that customer? You should. Lead tracking enables you to do both well.

MUI Corp. receives approximately 400 leads per year. I wanted to know why those consumers call my company, and I found out a lot more than I ever thought I would. Using this information, I learned that we could cut back on advertising and marketing expenses. I no longer do home shows, no longer have a big ad in the yellow pages, no longer spend big bucks on print advertising. That is an annual saving for the company of around $25,000 that converts to bottom-line profits.

I can now tell you where my dollars and efforts should be spent to get me the best customers: direct referrals and repeat customers. Had I not spent the time to evaluate this, I would still be spending a lot of money on advertising and marketing that returned nothing.

Lead tracking enables you to manage your business. Why have your potential customers stopped calling, why have they increased? As MUI grew, our lead/close ratio went down from 27 percent to 17 percent. First, if we had not been tracking leads, we would not have known this. Second, I realized the more people that call, the more jobs you do not get. Many potential customers (PCs) were just tire kickers.

We learned to do a better job of "qualifying" our PCs. After all, we were driving to their home--many times after hours--wasting gas and time talking with someone who was going to go lowest price or had a $5,000 budget for a $50,000 job. Our gas expense dropped 10 percent when we started spending more time on the first return phone call. Sure, it took a few minutes longer on the phone, but except for the employees'' time, it''s free. No gas, truck wear, sweating or swearing as you drive away from the call mad because you wasted your time.

Here''s some hard questions to ask your PC after some warm-up: