Simple things to do when you receive a lead that will make the difference
When a lead comes in, don’t you wonder, who are they? I wish I knew what made them tick. What’s their hot buttons? Or better yet, something that many an ISM struggles with, is this person real or just some kid messin around on the computer?? You have heard that with sales you need to be a good investigator, right? You need to read between the lines? Well, lets get to work! Lead comes in: The first thing we need to do when we get any lead, especially one that is a yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc is Google the email. Lets see if its on a business website as a contact, a forum, blog, etc. Its amazing what you will find. I checked out two last week. One for our leasing company. One of the guys said they got a lead from our leasing website and no contact info, just an email. Must be fake, right? A kid? It was a yahoo address. Well, I don’t know, let’s take a look. I Googled it and low and behold, I found it on a website of a local land developer. One of the owners, father and son. What do you think the leasing guy thought now? Wow, this is a real guy, isn’t it? You bet! Why did the prospect do that? Who knows? All I know is, he’s real and I know more about him now and I can even call him if I want too.
The second thing we need to always notice is where the email is from. Example would be john@bigburgers.com. Who and where is Big Burgers? Copy the last part of the email and open up a browser, paste it in and click go. Check out the website, look around, go to the contact page. Is john there? Google their name. LinkedIn does a great job of SEO and you will find many a person show up in a Google search as a member of LinkedIn. Become a member. Check out what he does, who he is.
Google their phone number:
www.411.com is a great place to get information:
Warning: Be careful and make sure you match up the information correctly, its not a guessing game, the information either helps you or it doesn’t. If you are unsure, don’t use it.
If you don’t have the time to do these simple steps, you have too many leads. Period. It’s these steps that will give you the inside track. A “look inside”. Make it a habit, do this with everyone and watch your sales go up!
Chris Hanson
www.followupforsuccess.com
