Cost per Lead or CPL is a major KPI of any lead generation campaign. Lead generation agencies do compete on CPL, working day and night adjusting campaign parameters only to lower the CPL by a few cents. Customers, however, are insensitive to these small variations. As an agency, can you do better, much better than others? Cutting the CPL in half for example!
Sounds like magic? We think it is possible. Here is the magic.
Lead generation agencies are focusing too much on lead generation and missing the big picture. Let’s look a bit further than the Facebook and Google campaign. What happens to leads once they are generated? They are sent to sales people who will do some kind of follow up with each and everyone of those leads, with the objective of moving them down a sales funnel.
First thing a salesperson needs to do when receiving leads is to qualify them. Meaning separating the hot from the cold leads. Keeping only the ones ready for the next sales level, whatever that means for a business.
If out of 100 leads only 10 are ready for the next level, then that’s a 10% qualification rate. Sales people will only consider the 10, the other 90 are sent to trash or recycled at best. So, in this case, if you generate leads at 5$, the actual cost that your customer sees is 50$ per lead.
The main idea here is that you should act to lower the 50$/lead not the 5$per lead. By acting on the qualification rate. If the qualification rate goes from 10% to 20% then the cost per lead becomes 25$, cut in half!
The question is how hard is it to double a qualification rate? Not that hard. This study shows that you can multiply your qualification rate by 7 if you call your lead within 5 minutes of conversion time. The study is backed by strong data, but let’s talk about our own experience in this regard. We’ve seen repeatedly that some basic improvements to the way leads are dealt with can easily double the qualification rate. 7x is indeed possible as the study suggests, but in this article we will target 2x as a first step.
Four actions towards 2x qualification rate:
- Send a welcome email to every new lead instantaneously. It helps keep them warm.
- Notify the sales team instantaneously of every new lead conversion. One or more sales people should take action quickly.
- Once notified, sales people should have instantaneous and easy access to a shared lead repository, with the ability to change the lead status and take ownership.
- Follow up actions must be possible right away from the shared repository. Actions like sending informational emails and scheduling follow up calls.
With these 4 actions in place, qualification rate can easily double compared to a campaign without them.
Many modern CRMs offer these features. But when you are acting as the agency in charge of lead generation, it is complicated to set up a CRM for every one of your customers. That’s when Ohmylead comes into play. Ohmylead offers an agency plan that is multi-customer and white labeled. Set your account once, and onboard as many customers as needed. Every one of your customers logs in to a private agency-branded space, to take quick actions on newly generated leads. Customers can set up their own welcome emails and notifications.
What are you waiting for? Give it a try now by signing up to an agency plan free trial.
