5
Priority 1 – Convert leads,
opportunities and enquiries into
protable business
If you are easily converting 100 per cent of your leads and enquiries into
business at the prices that you really want and are totally satised that
improvement is impossible, then you can skip this chapter and write to
me with your secret. Perhaps we’ll publish it together! If, however, you are
not getting the results that you would like and want to explore a relatively
quick, inexpensive and almost guaranteed way to develop your business,
then read on.
In case you are one of those people, sitting there, book in hand, thinking
to yourself, ‘I think we’re pretty good at this conversion issue,’ let me spell
out again why this topic is the place to start your business development.
As an informal bit of research, I recently telephoned 20 businesses in
various sectors as a potential customer or client, with a general query about
their various products, services and prices. Here is a depressingly blunt
summary of some of my experiences and what I encountered:
At four businesses nobody was available to speak to me, and only two offered
a call back.
Neither of the two which had offered to call me back actually called.
At two organisations, I never got past reception or switchboard. They simply
gave me a price and terminated the call.
At ve businesses, I was put through to the wrong person . . . someone who
couldn’t help at all.
60 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
Just to give you a slightly better feel for how some of my actual conversa-
tions went, one of my calls triggered this short dialogue with someone on
reception/switchboard, who had already told me to call back later and ask
for a specic person. I did call back at 11.15 in the morning and here is the
conversation:
Me: Hi, I wonder if I can speak to Mr Smith please . . . I called
earlier. (Name changed to protect the guilty.)
Switchboard: I’m sorry, he’s just popped out for a haircut and then he’s
going straight to lunch . . . he always likes to take his lunch
early.
Me: Okay, what time will he be back?
Switchboard: Well he is often late back. He likes long lunches, I’d leave it
until after 3 pm, if I were you . . . but don’t leave it too late as
he often goes home early . . . he likes to play golf you see!
Now there’s a man who knows about the ‘work/life balance’!
By the way, these results are not exceptional. I have, over the years, made
hundreds of similar mystery calls . . . I have even made some of them live
from my public seminars in front of large audiences . . . and encountered
I was told by one service business, ‘We don’t give gures over the phone.’ End
of call!
At one professional practice rm I was told, without any prompting, ‘I can give
you a gure, but we don’t do cheap!’
In only three calls did anybody engage me in a real and proper conversation
and ask about my requirements.
Only twice was I asked what had prompted my call to them.
Not one business gave me any specic reasons why I should choose them as
opposed to a competitor.
Only three offered any written follow-up information but only one actually kept
its promise and sent me anything.
Not one organisation asked if I would like to go ahead and do business with
them.
Fifteen out of the 20 made me feel like I was a nuisance, and that they would
be doing me a favour by dealing with me.
In three of the calls I was on telephone hold for over two minutes.
In a third of all calls neither party to the call knew who they were talking to. In
other words, they hadn’t asked my name nor did they give theirs.
In only four calls were any contact details asked for.
5
Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 61
these sorts of responses as standard. Bear in mind, too, that all the busi-
nesses telephoned in the survey above spend serious money trying to
generate just the kind of calls I made. All of them have a ‘leaky enquiries
bucket’, but most won’t be aware of it.
Let me ask again . . . how much business are you losing?
As a commercial trend, at rst sight this may seem rather negative and
disturbing, but as someone with an interest in business development, you
should see this very opportunistically. The enlightened readers among you
should have worked out by now that this generic ‘equality of inefciency’
gives you and your business a great opportunity to stand out and ‘clean up’
in your sector, if you can get it right.
For any cynics among you, let me give you a taste of the kind of average
results you can achieve. Businesses which review their processes for dealing
with enquiries and properly adopt the strategies and methods I am about
to set out typically see an increase in success rates of around 10 per cent
within the rst month and many triple their conversion rates within six
months. By the way, I have also seen businesses that have dramatically
increased conversion rates also increase their prices at the same time. More
conversions at higher prices . . . imagine what effect that would have in
your operation!
So what are these magic strategies and techniques? What exactly do you
need to do in your business to improve and increase your conversion rates?
Well, the good news is that they are all very basic and straightforward. In
fact, they are so obvious that they are all too often overlooked.
I set out below the general concepts rst, my 10 commandments of
converting leads and enquiries. Only when you have understood and
processed these will you be totally ready to adopt my ve-step conversion
process with total condence and commitment.
Everything I’m going to tell you applies equally to leads and enquiries
being dealt with over the telephone (incoming or outgoing call backs) or
through face-to-face visitors to your premises.
I will, however, give you a few additional tips on dealing with e-mail
enquiries later and in Chapter 7 on the internet and social media I will
specically be examining the issue of converting website trafc into
business.
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