How to Multiply Your Leads

It’s always been the case. Since the dawn of time - or around the time my children think I was born - businesses have sought lead generation. The first heating contractor sold fire door-to-door; the first plumber offered ways to get rid of that musty smell in the cave basement. You know the rest: as soon as those first jobs were completed, the first collection agency began.  

The life-blood of business is lead generation. Our most commonly heard request in Marketing Coaching calls is “How do I generate more leads?” They’ve heard all sorts of advice; gotten all sorts of prices from various media, have seen a variety of approaches, and even get a sermon from me on the topic.

It doesn’t matter - they feel “stuck”, confused, or overwhelmed. So depending on the contractor, we occasionally list the steps, but just as often we teach how to do it for yourself (the “teach a man to fish” approach). Not long ago, we got an email…

“… kind of hesitated to ‘get started’. But I'd like others to realize they don't have to feel stuck.  Starting with a few changes can reap immediate benefits that can help them make other changes that will reap further benefits. It’s momentum.

Since generating more leads, I’m now a better sales person, closing a higher percentage. But the biggest factor is having more leads to work with. And I wanted to say, ‘Thanks for all your help.’”            Steve Scott, Comfort Technology, NY

That was very nice of him to say, but the most important word in his email was “Momentum.” Yes, that was a marketing lesson.

You see, he started off “stuck”. But Steve is the guy I mentioned a few articles ago who is getting 6-10 leads a week from a $54 ad. He closes half of those for a Maintenance Agreement. He also invests in Direct Response when the leads slow down, plus he sends all customers a newsletter – like clockwork – and follows up his leads, referrals, and sales regularly. He so “unstuck” now, he can’t even remember it. So, how do you get a dose of marketing momentum when the leads are down?

First, if you’re going fishing, it’d be nice to know what was biting right? How about where, when, on what, how often? Same thing here, so your very first clue to better lead generation is…

Track your Incoming Leads – Would you put your money in a bank that couldn’t tell you the interest rate? How about a watch with no hands? I mean come on – you’re investing in marketing for results, so think in terms of measurement.

Your receptionist can keep up with this in a number of ways. I’ve seen very effective companies use a “tick mark” system of noting an ad’s response that is then fed into a weekly results sheet for leads and sales.  I’ve also seen sophisticated contact management software that had a field for incoming leads per media type. Any method is better than no method. The essence of tracking is to find what works and how well it’s paying you back.

How are you going to figure an ROI if you don’t look at the R and the I?

Look who’s buying – Your customer list shouldn’t be viewed simply as one large category, but as multiple levels of information.  Avoid the frustration of making offers to the wrong group by taking your full list and dividing it to select the best targets. 

How do you determine your most valuable customers? Here’s a quick list segmentation method I like called “RFT”.

Recency: Those who have spent money with you in the last 24 months;

Frequency: Those who have used you with the greatest frequency in the last 24 months

Transaction size: Those who have spent the most with you in the past 24 months.

1. Rank the BEST candidates according to the above and determine how big a list you can effectively contact.

2. Assemble your RFT list for a PostCard offering $20 off ANY service call, PLUS a $20 gift certificate for referrals who get service work done within the next month (or whatever time period you determine). 

Oh, I can hear the cries from some of you already… “I’ve got to pay $20 for each new customer?!”  Actually, you’re already paying more than that.  The average customer acquisition cost is $275, so this is mighty cheap by comparison, and you only “pay” when they pay you.

The gift certificate can be for a lunch/dinner, which is a nice gift. (A wise restaurant owner will sell you blocks of 10 or so certificates for as little as HALF the face value to put more diners in the seats. They may have certain night limitations.)

Now, not only will you generate leads and nearly free referrals with the right offer, but you’ll determine the value of this list to help find commonalities for a much broader contact list later. Bear with me for a sec.

3. Make the call – Follow the PostCards with a call saying, “Did you get our money-saving PostCard in the mail?” (If the answer’s is “no,” check your records.) “Great, our technician will be in the area on Thursday and Friday.  Which would be a better day to stop by to evaluate any plumbing needs?”  This is an alternate-of-choice close and not pushy if said by a PLEASANT smiling voice. Modify for your tastes, but you get the idea.  

If your caller runs into a person who doesn’t need any work, can’t think of a referral, but says nice things, jot it down and request to use it as a testimonial.

From your customer list, a 1.3%-2.5% response is the “range” depending on quality of list and offer. Getting 50 leads from a 1000-2000 piece mailing is not a bad result for an hour to get the mailing ordered. (We had a direct response piece get 11%, but that was freakish, and not to be expected. Of course, we brag about it endlessly, like I just did again.)

This is a small mailing, to a high quality list. As you generate appointments, sales, and referrals, you’ll have made some money to keep the momentum going. Since you tracked your leads (Remember? You did, didn’t you?), you now have a “guide”…

Once the “commonalities” of your list are determined profitable, go get a list of similar demographics. A Mail List Broker (in the dreaded Yellow Pages or at www.amerilist.com ) can create a list based on the best respondents using combined income, age of home, education, and other parameters. This is a simple list to obtain.

In fact, this whole list is simple to do, doesn’t cost a bunch, and can generate a flood of leads when you need ‘em most… like now. Can you think of a reason not to get started?

Let your marketing momentum begin!

The #1 Myth of Getting More Leads

I hear it all the time. And it is flat-out wrong. It comes out in coaching calls here. I see it posted on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and nearly every Contractor Discussion board.

Contractors, understandably wringing their hands, want to know something like, "Hey, do postcards work?" Or, "Is your website getting you leads?" Or, "Anyone tried radio?"

They focus on the thing that "costs", that is, the media. They've been brainwashed by the media salespeople who all claim "theirs" is best, cheapest, fastest, blah blah. It's all a crock of crack.

What "sells" is the message. Always has been, always will be. A rotten message in any media you choose is still a rotten message. According to Clayton Makepeace, America's highest paid copywriter and marketing strategist:

"The media doesn't make the sale. The message does.
Therefore, the way you persuade people to buy never changes."

You can drive thousands to your website using sophisticated SEO strategies, or rise to the top through Google paid listings. Yet if your message is poor, the traffic comes and is gone, leaving you with one very expensive revolving door on your website. Same with 10,000 letters, a dozen billboards, and the glitziest TV ad ever shot.

It's not the media, it's the message.

Get that right and the market will respond. The media is merely the delivery vehicle. So, what makes a good message? In the last 11 years of focusing on contractor sales messages and selling a few billion dollars of equipment, this is the gold list. Click for the Top 5 Messages that nearly force prospects to respond.

"I Can't Afford That"

The following is an excerpt from a single conversation, but we hear "similar" comments regularly. If you read the 3^rd paragraph closely, you'll find a very common business fault that strangles many contractors.

"I can't afford that," sighed Carey, a 14 year contracting veteran in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. "I used to say this whenever some 'new' business thing would pop up."

"This happened fairly often. Like when we looked into a new digital copier/printer. The sales rep proved I'd save money over the old way. He'd show what I overpaid in toner, time wasted with employees having to get up and down instead of sending documents by email, the whole thing. And I'd give my standard response, 'I can't afford that'."

"Eventually, after over-spending on our old system, we replaced it. I'd have been ahead if I'd done it sooner. But nooo " ... Carey mocked himself, "I couldn't afford it."

"Same for my old clunky phone system, training my techs, or replacing my aging trucks. Nearly every time I had to replace one, I'd look back and see that repairs, rotten mileage, and lost time in the broken trucks had cost me real money. Not to mention the negative 'image' they sent customers."

"That's when I realized something that changed my business."

What Carey realized is a falsehood that hurts, even bankrupts many small businesses. The link explains this truth: Business die when small problems seem big and big problems seem small.

Measurement That Matters

We're warned that pride is a bad thing. And I fully understand. Pride entraps its victim in a blanket of mock superiority on its way to personal doom. Boasting becomes pride. Pride becomes conceit. Conceit becomes no one.

Funny, but the ever-boasting blowhard of self-achievement 'thinks' that their accomplishments make them more attractive, more fun to be around, more likable. None are true. Just as this paragraph started, they make you a blowhard. Knowing all this...

My son graduated from High School this past weekend. I am proud of him. There, I said it. He got a scholarship in an honors program. He won the headmaster's Award for Excellence. And all this was achieved with at least half of his parents not being all that great of a student (guess which one!).

If my chest pokes out any further, I will have Eva Mendez' profile... or snap a rib. So I'll stop.

The thing about school is that they 'measure'. Scores are scores, grades based thereupon, college acceptance/scholarships directly correlative, segments sliced accordingly. "Oh, you made a 33 on the ACT test? You go in this stack. And you with the 18, you go over here."

In the job world, the surface measurement is usually money. This - along with pride - is another set up for the Scriptural Sin Grab Bag. Sure, many worthy alternative definitions of success abound: title, influence, responsibility, result, impact. All are important; all worthy of your focus. Harder to measure, but worthy.

Yet here is THE problem with most contractors' measurement and focus Click to see how many thousands of people he can offend in 2 sentences or less...

Clearly Unclear

Old cars are like young children. Highly dependent, often naggy, hard to predict. Okay in that light, they're like older children too. Yet one of my strange old vehicles needed a windshield because it failed to avoid a 70 mph rock. Silly car. Since it was already having some other mechanical needs tended, I figured I'd get it all done at once.

So, I did what any modern consumer does, I opened the Yellow Pages. HA! Good one. I went to Google, clicked the top couple of names, and actually found one that listed my glass and at a reasonable price. "Wow, I thought. This is so easy." Any time you make a statement like that to yourself, you have doomed the outcome to sheer bedlam. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Proceeding ignorantly - my favorite way - I place the order online. It totals my order, and even politely mentions, "This price includes the windshield, gasket, and all labor. If we find you don't need a new gasket, this amount will be deducted." Soooo easy, said the Titanic's most oblivious passenger.

Afterward, it asks me to pick a "convenient" time. I scan for the option that says, "Never" but then notice THEY can go to the CAR while it's in the mechanical repair shop. "Now that IS convenient!" I say to myself, like getting a ride to a Vampire's blood drive, with much the same outcome.

So, I have the part, the installation price, the date, the place... it's all set! Whoohoo. The internet makes things SO EASY.

Soon after the "confirmation" email (translation: "a wild guess with legal language attached") things went weird. Their CSR (translation: Customer Service Repellant) called. From there, all online promises were off, chuckled at in their dismissal. Just goes to show two things: a) Your marketing and your service had better be consistent, and b) The internet's 'ease' of commerce is commensurate relative to the 'ease' of any customer's communication with the world. Case in point...

The Anti-Social Network

Just in time for Halloween, I re-activated my Facebook account. Talk about scary. Since I’d “forgotten” to post anything for the last 8 months, somehow 191 invitations piled up. And we’re not even to the scary part.

While wading through invitations, I attempted efficiency. And in my first ‘re-post’ announcing my new-found efficiency method, I ticked off the Facebook community.

What I meant to do was separate my business life and personal life.

I just felt that the business community didn’t really care about seeing a photo of me wearing a cute but overly large cowboy hat while in my underpants. Especially since I was 32 at the time.

Let this be a lesson to all those who “thought” the job interview went great, but the call-backs went strangely silent. That video of you on stage at the Marilyn Manson concert holds a clue to your spate of unfruitful interviews.

Anyway, when I posted about separating the two worlds, and my ‘limited’ acceptance of friends, some were annoyed. Yet I believe there are…

4 Facebook ‘Friend’ Segments:

1. People who you’ve lost contact with, and are sincerely happy to have them ‘linked’ into your life.

2. People you’ve lost contact with, that you frankly don’t miss.

3. People you sort of knew, but considered anti-social, weird, a little too into Star-Wars, and most likely to be wearing footed pajamas well into their 30’s.

4. The Unabomber

I really only want to stay in touch with Group 1, and might stretch to Group 2 for entertainment only. Yet some users “collect” friends, like baseball cards or matchbooks (with similar emotional investment) so they can proclaim, “I have 7,812 friends on Facebook!”

This elicits jealously among those in footed pajamas, causing them to rewatch the entire Star Wars trilogy – or my preference, its eulogy – during which they begin “friending” people they haven’t seen since the entire 5th grade gave them a wedgie of galactic proportions.

Thus the reason I got so many invitations.

I half considered starting an Anti-Social Network where those with fewer followers are revered.

Now to the business sector. Mixing B2B and Social Media (aside from LinkedIn) is often viewed as handing out business cards at a funeral: you just don’t do it.

Yet there are clever ways to achieve social networking goals and business goals simultaneously without revealing too much “Personal” and without being an overly promotional buffoon.

Next time I’ll share the Business Side of Social Networking.

Midterm Mindlessness

With midterm elections just around the corner, the political rhetoric has been ratcheted up a few billion notches. And in case you missed it, the focus seems to be on our still-lagging economy. If I hear one more political ad promising the complete and total turnaround of the U.S. economy within 24 hours of electing Joe Schmoe, I may just have to start a campaign of my own. Why?

I’m as sick of the economic non-news as you are. (Part of the reason its called “NEWS” is something in it should “NEW”.) I’ll go so far as to say the following, which could cause a flurry of hate-mail being sent my way.

There’s no point in crying about the newest Economic non-news, especially if…


1. We start looking at what’s more important in life than money. How can it be bad to return focus on family, simplicity, and doing without meaningless clutter? Gosh, we might read a book instead of forking over $50 to go to the movies. Which one could “enrich” you in two ways?

2. We remember that if we weren’t selling our stocks or homes when they were “up”, why in the world would we become anxious in contemplation of doing so when they’re down?

3. We recognize that the “value” of our gains was merely “potential” value, only becoming realistic if sold. Big difference between “potentially” and “realistically”. Potentially your service van can compete in the Indy 500. Realistically, you’d be better off on foot.

4. Embrace the “C” word. I’ve yet to see homeowners go without heat, or plumbing, or electricity. Be very thankful you’re in your field of work, and that commodity is not a four-letter word. And more importantly…

5. Just be thankful, period. You’ve got health, or the hope of improvement, plus family, friends, and faith in better days ahead. Even what Americans call “poverty” materially dwarfs 70% of the rest of the world. We need to show less attitude, more gratitude.

6. All this stuff is God’s anyway. We’re just renting it. (Some of us a little behind on the payments perhaps.) Regardless of your faith or belief, there’s a pretty decent chance you believe someone other than man made the earth, its resources, its glory. Further, I’ll imagine you’ve yet to figure out a way to take it with you when you’re gone. Want what you have.

If THIS is what the economic turmoil brings us, bring it on. It’s here anyway; neither you nor I caused it; we can only control how we respond.

A choice, as I see it. Now go share some good news. There’s plenty enough to go around.

Thoughts and considerations –

1. Do you have ONE PERSON you’d like to thank? I bet more than one. Why not ‘pay out’ with some thanks to somebody who could use it? Pretty darn easy to. Click here to get started.

2. Do you have a whole BUNCH of people you’d like to thank at one time? Like, um, maybe YOUR CUSTOMERS? We have contractor Holiday Cards available again this year.

3. Would you like to triple your market penetration for pennies? Check out the radius marketing program through Express Copy.

7 Steps to Lead Generation Riches

I don’t know who said “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing,” but it has never been more true. Every week of this ‘new’ economy, contractors call or question, “How can I get more leads?”

Yet, in that decidedly ruthless way that shocks the inquisitor, we are trained to respond: “What are you doing with the ones you have now?”

By that we mean 7 ‘main things’ to extract full, cash-rich value from your current lead flow. It’s right there under your nose…

1. Where’d they come from? (Market source via media.)
2. How big is this target source? (What we call “universe”.)
3. How many bought what? (Closing ratio per item.)
4. What did they pay? Upsell offered? (Transaction size per ratio.)
5. Do they have friends? (Referral follow up chain.)
6. What about the ones you didn’t close? (Follow up closing efforts)
7. What system will keep all these customers and prospects coming back to you?

Because to us, we can make the phone ring again. But if you’re not maximizing the lead value, then it’s only marketing heroin. More is not always better.

Those questions are in order too. The top one is the most important. A mediocre ad to the best target will outperform the best ad to a mediocre target. Yes, as an overpaid copywriter, I just said that. Truth is, we can usually kick your mediocre offer AND help you find the best list because that serves both of us.

Then “target” in to wherever your offer is aimed. From your customer list to your web visibility, which includes SEO, AdWords, and even your radio demographic, Cable reach, and in house prospect list. These are ‘segments’ you can define and have a reachable quantity. That leads to #2.

Is this your current list, dated list, big ticket buyers, referrals, church bulletin, little league parents, chamber of commerce? I mean, you’ve got to know the size of the pool. To answer whether its even worth fishing the pool, #3 comes into play…

Do they close well? Or are they a bunch of mealy mouth price shoppers? Maybe they’re affluent, rabid for image and product ‘z’ supports that image. Closing ratio must intersect with ticket and gross profit to be meaningful. Then to #4…

Are they high transaction sales that can make your month? Or low transaction that must sustain volume to be profitable? On either, is there a more profitable upsell you’re not offering? Before you leave them…

Number 5 relates to finding a better ‘target’ than going back to the ‘pool’ again. Plus, no marketing dollars to find their referrals. The neighborhood, church members, business people in same category, seek commonalities and target your presentation accordingly.

And for #6 and #7 that most contractors miss severely…

What happened to those who didn’t close? You think they were window shopping you for fun? Find out why they didn’t buy and that’s the key to a fortune right there. Resolve that, go kick bootie with a far higher result from #3 - #6.

For #7, this is my age-old but more solid-than-ever (thanks to the economy) “Retention” message. The commonality among contractors doing well and those, um, “not” is powerful retention. Those who didn’t fill the pipeline and then build a high-sided inescapable pool into which it flowed are quite sorry. They had customers in there, but they escaped. Now they get to go back to #1, spending new marketing dollars to recreate what was lost. Not exactly ideal.

Yes, that’s how we multiply your efforts and results from your “existing” incoming leads. And you thought we were magic. All we can really do for you is a) Create a better message to make the phone ring, b) Make sure we aim it at the better targets, c) Let you extract full measure of the results.

Sound like a plan? Go back to your list of incoming leads now. Ask yourself the 7 questions. If you need us to help you fish them deeply, regularly, and to extract full value, that’s why we’re here. Otherwise, you’ve got plenty of bait in this article to catch a boatload.