How easy is it for someone who considers your product or service to become a good quality, qualified sales enquiry? This is a question businesses rarely ask, which means they’ll never know how many more qualified sales enquiries they could be getting every day, week and month.
High growth businesses, on the other hand, are highly focused on the entire journey from awareness to action. They are able to shift their focus from internal production and efficiency to study the behaviour of the people who consume their products and services. They do this because they understand the impact that just a 5-10% increase in the volume of good quality enquiries that convert into sales will have on their bottom line.
Understanding how prospects think and behave means you can fine-tune, not just your offer, but every way in which you interact with them. This could affect advertising and PR, your website, email marketing, customer services and social media, as well as the work of your sales team.
How Many Touches?
An enquiry is hardly ever the result of a single action. Research shows that it typically takes 6-8 ‘touches’ to result in a sales enquiry. That means 6-8 opportunities to get it right or get it wrong.
It also means 6-8 points at which you need to understand what the prospect’s intent and priorities are. Are they researching solutions to a problem? Are they actively searching for a supplier? What do they need to know before they can proceed to the next stage?
You need to be clear what those touchpoints are for your prospects. And you need to map these into customer journeys. You then need to analyse the quality of the interactions (online and offline) that you have with prospects at each stage. You also need to understand how best to keep that person within your conversion process between touches.
At each point in the process, a small percentage of potential sales can all too easily leak away, adding up to a very significant missed revenue opportunity.
Focusing on increasing the volume and quality of your enquiries, as well as the other five factors that drive profit growth takes a concerted effort. Finding time to do this while most people are (rightly) concentrating on production and the day job isn’t easy.
That’s where Access Performance Solutions can help. We have proven processes that help organisations put more energy behind profit growth factors to transform their profitability. If you’d like to discover more about what this could mean for your business, get in touch on 01823 429339.
