3 Steps to Dramatically Improving the Quality of Your Internet Leads and Sales Pipeline Right now

Every business—well at least 99% of them—would prefer to have a richer sales pipeline full of qualified leads that are truly interested in your product or service.

Over the last 7 years, I’ve given about 350 presentations to audiences big and small, discussing today’s digital buyer and the way things have changed so dramatically for sales and marketing over the last decade. But in a surprising number of cases, many businesses (at least their sales departments) still believe the internet produces “bad” leads—be it unqualified, bad fit, etc.

In every case, the problem never has anything to do with the internet or the type of person that communicates with businesses via the web. Rather, it comes down to one simple element—one that many companies, marketing departments, and certainly web design teams, don’t fully understand:

Bad messaging.

Yes, internet leads are as good or as bad as the messaging that brought them there.

So if your digital messaging (specifically your website) is fluff, generic, etc.—you can expect your leads to be fluffy, poorly qualified, etc.

But at the same time, if you’re willing to do a few simple things with your website and your web messaging, you’ll quickly find that internet leads can actually be some of the MOST qualified your company receives.

Here are the 3 steps:

3 Steps to Improve the Quality of Your Internet Leads Right Now

#1 Creating a section of your website called, “Who We’re NOT a Good Fit For”

Every business says who and what they are on their website. This is also why most businesses end up sounding the same and getting the same results. But almost no one says what they’re NOT. Start with what you’re not. Make that a major part of your sales messaging, especially with what is on your website.

This will make you dramatically more attractive to those prospects that actually are a good fit, and for the ones that are not, they’ll simply self-filter out of your pipeline.

#2 Create a “Problems We Solve” Page

Whether it’s sales or marketing messaging, you should always start with the problems you solve and not the solutions you sell. This is why, within your sales messaging and website, you should have a very prominent section that says, “Problems We Solve.” When listing those problems, you should state them exactly as a potential customer would think, search, or state them as well.

Here is a screenshot of our “Problems We Solve" Section at our former The Sales Lion website:

#3 Embrace the power of video in the Marketing and Sales Process NOW and create your “80%” Video

Studies have shown that by the year 2019, 80% of the content online reviewed by consumers during the buying process will be video-based content. With this being such a significant trend, every sales person literally needs to see themselves, and their company, as a media organization. This means they must teach using the power of video, often, and then integrate these videos throughout the entire sales and marketing process.

Simply stated, most sales pros spend way too much time when meeting with a prospect answering the same 80% of questions over and over again. But what would happen if they eliminated those questions? What would happen if every prospect knew, before the first sales appointment, your company’s philosophy and thoughts on those 80% of questions that everyone wants to know?

Yep, they’d be more qualified, more ready, and certainly more willing to buy.

Fact is, sales pros need to spend more time selling and less time teaching.

By creating an 80% video, your sales team will start to do exactly this.

So there you have it, three ways to improve the quality of your internet leads and sales pipeline immediately.

As always, if you have questions about any of this, or are interested in a workshop with your sales team on how exactly to do this, contact us today.