Your spoiled lazy sales team is destroying your lead campaigns. Well maybe it is not all their fault.

A branch manager or owner knows that keeping a sales team happy with good leads is important. Bad sales leads will turn a  team of educated grown sales people into a daycare full of babies. It is the sole resposibility of the manager or owner to provide their sales staff with good leads. However; a good sales lead is not going to close itself. The life cycle of your sales leads needs to be outlined and put into a standard operating procedure. When this is done each member of your sales team needs to be trained on the life cycle of your sales leads.

The outline of your leads life cycle needs to provide a clear picture of how each lead is handled from the time it is originated until it is a dead lead. In reality a lead should never be dead until your prospect opts out of your markeing campaign. Defining this process is going to allow you to maximize your media buys and hold your sales team accountable.

We were very interested to see how hard a sales lead generated on the Internet is worked.  We applied on 6 debt settlement websites over the last 2 months and analyized the life cycle of the lead. To say the least we were very shocked.

Out of 6 websites we applied on we found that only 2 out of the 6 worked the lead adequately. The 4 that did not work the lead well only emailed us 1 time and called us 1 time. Are you serious! On top of that everyone of these sites were found on Google PPC, probably paying $4 to &6 per click. I know I am sorry we clicked on your ads but that is not your problem. The problem is that someone paid good money to generate this lead and you have emailed and called the lead once. The company websites we applied on also did not respond to our inquiry until an hour after they received it.

The 2 companies that followed up well seem to understand how to work a lead. Here are some keypoints they followed and you need to start following today.

1. Send out an autoresponder email for each lead when it hits your system in real time. Thank them for applying, tell them who you are and tell them you are calling them right now.

2. Call the lead immediately. Not in 10 minutes but right now. A prospect that is on their pc or maybe even still on your website is going to pick up the phone. If you give them the chance to leave that space then your contact rate drops by 30% or more.

3. Use a lead management system to assure your leads are called up to 5 times over a course of 3 days. These numbers may be different for your company but the point is follow up and keep following up.

4. After 5 days put the lead into a automatted system that will email them ever 2 days and continue to call them once daily.

5. Verify the address on the lead to be valid and mail the client a letter asking them to call you immediately.

6. If after 10 days your prospect does not respond you need to continue to email the client until they opt out of your marketing campaign. Set up a new series of autoresponders to be sent to a prospect reaching this phase.

Managing your sales leads correctly, defining your leads life cycle and training your sales team on the process can increase your closing percentage by 3-5%. That increase is the difference between a good company and a great company.

There are many different telemarketing scripts for calling on a debt settlement prospect. Each calling script needs to be customized to the type of lead or data you are calling on. Let’s start with Internet leads. Internet leads are very good for debt settlement you just need to take advantage of the ones that do answer your call. First let’s start with where and how the lead was generated. These are important facts you need to know before you develop a sales pitch or call script for debt settlement. It is always best to ask your lead provider about their consumer website and how they drive traffic to their site. Now I am not saying you are going to get accurate information every time so the best thing you can do is test out 20 or 30 leads and ask the applicant where they applied and how they found the website. It is best to get it straight from the horses mouth.

So now that you have a good feel of how and where the leads are being generated you can develop a telemarketing script for these debt leads. Here is an example of a telemarketing script for a debt lead that is generated via email marketing to a variety of different landing pages. It is very common for lead generation companies to use multiple landing pages, you will find this out when you test the 20 or 30 leads. So let’s go with this scenario.

1. You call the lead. It is important to know what your Caller ID says and how it will be perceived by the prospect. Also it is good if you use the same company name as on the Caller ID.

2. Your greeting obviously needs to be pleasant and you need to get your purpose of the call out along with your initial greeting. You do not want to give the caller time to question who you are, what you are calling about and maybe even hang up on you. Here is an example, “Hello may I speak to Mrs. Smith”,  “Response”, “Good Morning Mrs. Smith my name is Dave Roberts with Stop your Debt and I am calling about your inquiry on our website today requesting information on debt help, how are you this morning?” It is good to not leave the prospect hanging with a yes or no question but a question that will lead into your pitch. A bad question to ask at the end of your opening would be “Do you have time for a consultation?”, you leave the prospect in a position to tell you “No”, which is something you do not want to hear.

3. After the prospect says, “I am fine”, you need to lay out quickly who you are, what your company is all about, and how you are going to solve their problem. This needs to be short so you can get into verifying their information. Here is an example, “I am glad to hear you are fine. Again my name is Dave Roberts with Stop your Debt and our program will reduce your debt, roll it into one low monthly payment and give you a fresh start. Now I see here you have $20,000 in credit credit card debt, is that correct?” It is good to confirm the information you have on the lead because usually the numbers are just estimates.

4. After confirming the details of the debt, income, employment, and their hardship you need to layout the plan. You have to be confident in what you need from them and lay it out with specific instructions. Here is an example, “Mrs. Smith I have all the information I need to see if you qualify for our program. What I need from you is this information and I need it sent to this fax number. I will call you back today with a solution that fits your needs. What is a time we can schedule a call to review the plan?”

5. You want to then confirm the time and phone number to contact them. It is good to also get an alternative phone, verify email address, and mailing address. Many times it is hard to get a lead back on the phone. Having complete contact information will help you reach the lead and close the deal.

When calling on Debt Internet Leads you will sometimes find a disconnect between the applicant and your call. Be prepared for questions like “What website did I apply on, I applied on a few.” To overcome this you need to know where your leads are coming from or have an educated answer. It is also good to ask your lead provider about branded thank you pages that help with this issue.

Debt Settlement is a hard industry. For the settlement companies and for lead providers looking to provide a quality debt lead. Not that most debt lead providers are not trying, the reality is that a good debt lead is hard to generate. Why? Well we will try and shed some light on this issue.

There is much debate on this subject and many are quick to just blame the lead provider for being bad. The truth is that a lead provider or the debt settlement company themselves can generate 10 debt leads online from search or contextual ads and never be able to reach 20% or have around 10-15% put in false information. What consumers think is on the other side of the debt form is a mystery. Why put in false information if you clicked the online ad, read the page and took the time to fill out the form. We will save that for another time.

The responsibility at that point falls in the lap of the lead provider. There is always going to be false leads submitted. The lead provider must have in place a solid quality control process. This can be done with services that verify data in real time or by using in house agents to verify the information. Data verification services that may link to your lead delivery system are great because they are fast and the cost is set. Issue is that many of these services will return incorrect information forcing lead providers to trash a good lead. Either way it is done a lead provider must provide a quality control process that works.

Contact rates on debt leads as we mentioned above are lower than many other verticals. A look into the mindset of consumers applying for debt help may help us understand this issue. Debt Relief or Debt Settlement is not as urgent as saving a home from foreclosure, lowering a mortgage rate because rates are going back up or refinancing to get cash in your pocket. Debt Relief applicants want help, need help, but many are not pressed to take care of this issue now. It is human nature to be sitting at work and thinking I need to get rid of this credit card debt, apply online then next thing you know your mind is taken to an entirely new issue - you may even need to do some work. Can you believe that.

So what can be done to combat this issue. Real Time Debt Leads with a Real Time Reaction!

Debt leads that are not real time are going to suffer when it comes to contact rate. You have a 1 to 5 minute window to call an applicant before they get side tracked. The other part of the equation is Real Time Reaction. We will discuss this subject a lot on this Blog. Real Time Reaction is simply the process and speed in which a lead buyer reacts to a new lead.

Here are some key points to Real Time Reaction below, we will be discussing each of these items in future post.

1. You must have some type of lead management system or CRM. You may be a whiz at excel, at your computer all day, but I guarantee you are missing out on sales managing leads manually.

2. Your script for calling on leads. You need to know where your leads applied, how they applied and write a custom script for each. If you call a lead and say “Hello my name is John with Clueless Debt Settlement calling about your need for Debt Relief”, then the applicant may be confused if they just applied on LowDebtNowPlease.com based on an email they received.

3. Your Caller ID. What does your Caller ID say? These applicants are running from creditors. Should your Caller ID say “Debt Agency” or “Debt Collection Help”. Think about it.

Stay tuned for more post by the Lead Closer Team!

Let’s jump right in.

First I would like to talk about the relationship between a lead provider or service provider and the buyer. No this is not Dr. Phil, but it is important to understand this relationship.

On the lead generation side of things it seems that new buyers come in with a lot of baggage. By baggage I mean fears based on past experiences. I mean nothing bad when I say baggage lead buyers, don’t take it personal. But who can blame you for being so skeptical of the lead industry. There are many companies that have made their living providing bad sales leads. I think it is very important that lead providers understand these fears and try to work with new buyers to curb these fears. Some ideas would be lowering normal minimum orders, offering a written guarantee or sending out a small amount of lead samples. I personally do not believe in offering lead samples. They are hard to set up, control and you really do not know what a potential client is going to get with 5 or 10 leads. From the buyer side this may sound “shady” but the reality is that a high volume lead operation could send out 100 lead samples daily based on request. That alone could put a lead provider out of business. Open communication about the buyers reservations and past experiences can help lead providers overcome objections and make more sales.

On the other side of the coin are reservations or fears the lead provider has about the lead buyer. With a very shaky financial system and many lead buyers coming from finance it is safe to say there has been some relationships that did not end on a high note. With the collapse of hundreds of top mortgage lenders and thousand of mortgage branches came unpaid bills. Many lead providers were forced to write of thousands in unpaid invoices. Lead buyers understanding this issue can help move the relationship along by agreeing or understanding tighter billing terms.

This does not mean a lead buyer needs to send in thousands of dollars to a new lead company and take a big risk. If both sides agree to a lower minimum and suitable billing terms then it just may be the beginning of a long and profitable business relationship.