You care about your leads, don’t you?
After all, you’re a thinker, a tastemaker, and a very important business person.
Let’s talk about Oiling Your Pipeline.
Regular inspection, maintenance, and oiling of your pipeline will help prevent it from going dry.
Survey the scene
Do you have a list of where your leads come from? Have you inventoried your most recent leads?
Step 1? Take 30 minutes, sit down, and make a list. Write that stuff down so you can remember it later. Ask yourself:
“Self, who are my ten most recent leads? How did they find out about me? What marketing seems to have brought them to me?”
Answer that question as best as you can.
For me and Double Your Ecommerce, my Shopify consultancy, today’s list looks like:
- Referral sources (clients)
- Referral sources (partners)
- Podcast Tours
- Email marketing
- Lead Necromancy
If you survey the scene and find yourself thinking
That’s odd. I’m not seeing <BLANK>…
That’s an opportunity to make a note of The Missing Lead Source and investigate it later.
The outcome of surveying the scene? You have a better idea of what lead sources are working (or, not working).
Triage your lead sources
You can’t focus on everything, so focus on the top one or two.
Take your list of lead sources and 80/20 it.
How do you know which are at the top? Use whatever measure you want:
- Volume of leads
- Value of leads
- Most profitable leads
- Total revenue through that lead source
Make a list, chop it down to the top 1 or 2.
Take intentional action
If your top lead source is a source of referrals, check-in with them. Take an interest in how they’re doing.
- Ask questions
- Be helpful
- Remind them of who your best fit referrals are
- Thank them
If your top lead source is an ongoing process (like SEO or Email marketing), review the process and ask yourself a few questions.
- What’s working well?
- What could be going better?
- What’s one thing you can do today to help this go better?
For each of your top lead sources, schedule a time to take deliberate, intentional action.
After that, schedule a time in 1, 2, or 3 months to come back and review how the lead source has been doing.
Excelsior!