Your Leads Are Trying To Tell You Something. Listen to these 12 signals

Your Pipeline is Giving You More Feedback Than You Realize.

A lot of business owners look at their leads with dollar signs on their eyes, to them they are just potential income. This viewpoint is understandable, especially because leads do represent opportunities for growth and earning. The whole truth though is that you leads and by extension your leads pipeline is actually a living diagnostic tool. If you learn to pay attention to it properly and learn how to read it, it can help you understand which direction you business is headed in. Here are the 12 signals hidden in your lead data that can diagnose the health of your business.

1. The Cost For New Leads Is Increasing

Your cost of acquisition is the operational cost it takes to turn a lead into a paying client. When this happens for a growing business it could mean that technology costs have risen, but it could also mean something else that is more serious. It is a sign that the market is no longer responding to your messaging with the same level of clarity as it did before. Should you then spend more? No, not necessarily. It just means that you need to investigate why your message is no longer resonating as efficiently as before.

2. You Have Too Many IQLs

Is there a pattern of people downloading your resources, but no one is booking calls with you? This means that you are generating curiosity and not commitment. These downloads are likely from IQLs - Information Qualified Leads. IQLs represent people who are early in the buying stage, so early in fact that they may not really have any conscious buying intent; i.e. They may not know that they even need to be sold a solution. Regardless, the heavy presence of IQLs could mean that you don't have a system for nurturing or moving people from education to revenue. It can also indicate that what you offer might be seen as helpful, but not essential.

3. You are Being Shopped Constantly

Does your pipeline have several leads that went dead because you were likely being shopped? This simply means your business probably doesn't have strong differentiators from your competitors. It is that simple, the value that you offer is probably not clear to others. When that happens, the only differentiator is price. And…you see where we are going with this right? You get shopped.

4. Your Lead Source is Narrow

If most of your revenue comes from one primary channel, let's say referrals, then your pipeline is really telling you two things at once. First, it's telling you that referrals are working. It is also telling you that when referrals run out you are at risk. A good business studies it's highest converting source and doubles down on it. Additionally, a good business diversifies intelligently so that growth does not depend on a single source. Remember, your lead source data reveals both opportunity and vulnerability.

5. You Have A Low Close Rate and High Lead Volume

Fire your sales team! Just kidding of course. You clearly don't have a traffic problem, so if the vast majority are not closing it likely means there is a disconnect with what your marketing is saying and what the final product is delivering. Your marketing might actually be attracting the wrong demographic and you may need to improve how you explain yourself.

6. High Close Rates, but Low Volumes

This is the opposite situation to the point before. Your sales process is clearly working, but it seems that you have a distribution issue. Could a strategic marketing investment make sense at this juncture? The simple truth is that you absolutely need more exposure, that is the non-negotiable.

7. Your Leads Are Stalling at the Negotiation Stage

"Have they not accepted the proposal yet?" Trust us, we've been there and we know that mental gymnastics we all go through, with wondering if we over priced the proposal. If prospects are hesitating after receiving a proposal, the truth is, it's rarely about the price alone. It is usually also a matter of trust and credibility. They are subconsciously not sure that you are the safest bet for them. Credibility is a hard to pass on, but that needs to be the focus of your solution.

8. You Are Getting Repeated Objections

Marketing and Sales are like fishing and farming. A good fisherman and farmer are really sensitive to patterns and are always analyzing those patterns to get on the good side of how nature works. This is no difference from how we need to be as business leaders who have oversight of marketing and sales. If you are seeing or hearing the same concerns, then your business has a friction point; a very clear one. A very favorite phrase of ours is that repeated concerns are there to tell us that our assumptions about a matter were wrong. We should view patterns not as annoyances but as instructions for us to follow.

9. Discount Requests Are Frequent

This signal is an easy fix, but it is also a serious tell. If people are trying to haggle you on the price, then you've spent your marketing budget selling yourself as the affordable commodity. It is that simple. If you've spent your time making your biggest appeal how cheap you are, you will attract people who care more about price. Those are the people who haggle; sorry. What is the fix for this? Start emphasizing your expertise above all else and ensure that your brand and copywriting shifts towards value and uniqueness.

10. Your High-Intent Leads, Go Cold

I hate to tell you, but this is also an internal systems problem. Follow up on Sales Qualified Leads needs to be very quick. If you stall, delay or procrastinate follow-up, you will lose people who are late in the buying phase. If that habit keeps up, your businesses growth will forever stall.

11 "Do You Design Websites?"

If your leads are asking very foundational questions, then you might be again assuming that people are grasping what may actually be going horribly unsaid. There is undoubtedly an education gap that needs to be closed, so that you can be more clear. The great news is that clarity very often leads to more growth!

12 Your Clients Convert But Don't Stay

Even though most pipelines end with Sales Won or Lost, there is still a lot to be learned after this point. The danger word here is churn. Churn refers to amount of customers/clients that quit using your service after signing up. This is expressed as a percentage and it might be indicating a few things.

1. You are over-promising on your final product and your marketing needs some alignment.

2. You may have a weak onboarding process which results in people not knowing where to start, continue or to make usage of the things most important to them.

3. You may also be attracting the wrong client; one who may be expecting more or one who might actually be overwhelmed from your offering.

   
   

Learn to Read these Signals

Your leads and pipeline are all speaking to you and they can help you stop guessing what is or is not working in your business. And the sooner you can stop guessing, the faster we can get to finding a solution for you.