Part 2: How to Increase Sales and Shrink Customer Acquisition Costs in 2010

Five Ways to Cut Costs and Still Increase Sales

In Part 1 of this two-part series we offered advice about how to evaluate which 2009 lead generation programs produced the highest quality leads and how to nurture leads to save on lead generation costs. In part 2 of this series we offer five ways to cut more costs in 2010 while still producing high quality leads.

1. Generate higher quality leads; tweak your business rules and lead capture web pages

Here’s a low cost way to generate more quality inquiries. Study your web “Contact Us” or “Request More Information” forms. If you’re asking the wrong questions, you’re getting the wrong kind of inquiries. If you’re asking too many questions you’ll turn off inquirers.

Review you business rules to identify which inquirers are truly qualified or sales-ready leads. Make changes to increase lead quality. Tweaking the business rules to eliminate less qualified inquirers will improve lead quality, lead conversion and marketing ROI. Then adjust your web forms to meet your fine-tuned business rules.

2. Get sales and dealers to report on leads

After looking at your 2009 lead and sales data you may discover that you can’t produce accurate ROI calculations because the sales people or dealers aren’t reporting the results of each lead you sent to them.

We frequently see this. We call it “lack of sales compliance.” And, the problem is not unique to any company using lead management or sales force automation systems. One of the lowest cost ways to increase lead conversions and ROI is to simply get the sales teams to report their lead results. SmartLead has implemented sales compliance programs to remind and encourage sales people to report their lead results. We’ve increased compliance as much as 122%. We can help you address sales compliance in 2010.

3. Reduce fulfillment costs

Evaluate your literature fulfillment processes. There are three ways we’ve helped clients cut costs:

Control inventory:

a. We reduced literature costs for one client by more than $100,000 and accelerated fulfillment delivery with our in-house ISO 9001:2008 certified fulfillment and warehouse center. We centralized the client’s warehouse and fulfillment operations and implemented a new literature system that provided inventory control measures, online inventory reporting and an easy-to-use online ordering interface.

b. We cut fulfillment costs with our no-back order guarantee for collateral. We estimate the anticipated usage of collateral pieces and print items only when needed. This allows clients to keep a smaller stock on hand. It’s especially useful for pieces that require frequent changes. Or, we can pre-print materials at our expense, store them and clients pay only for the pieces they use.

Electronic Fulfillment:

a. In 2009, many of our clients switched from hard copy to electronic fulfillment, using our SmartLead lead management system to automatically send prospects links to brochures, product specification sheets and catalogs. Electronic fulfillment saves on printing, processing, and postage costs.

4. Revive cold leads

In 2009, how many of your leads were 30 days old or more and weren’t touched by your sales team or dealers? Often a lead is still interested in your product but you’re not sure where they are in their buying process. In 2009, several clients had their lead generation budgets reduced, but used a small portion of their marketing budget to have the SmartLead contact center re-contact and re-qualify their untouched leads. These calls not only resulted in renewed interest from these leads, but more than $500,000 in products were sold in one re-qualification program.

5. Build sales channels

While evaluating your lead conversion data you may have discovered that some dealers didn’t work enough of the leads you sent them or they didn’t convert a sufficient percentage of their leads.

If adding more dealers in 2010 is in your plan, we can improve the process to speed dealer evaluation and on-boarding. We can configure an account in the SmartLead lead management system for use by your channel partner or business development managers. They can track contacts with potential dealers and automate dealer applications and the approval process.