Lead Management Tips - Prospecting for Success: Grow your membership numbers.

Running a successful business requires many things but the bare minimum is a revenue stream and this means sales. There is a wide range of ways to improve your sales but today we’re going to cover Prospect and Lead management. There are 3 main forms of prospects inquiries. Walk-Ins, Phone Calls and Web Enquiries (emails, forms, etc.) Walk-ins and call-ins present the simplest path to conversion as these individuals have taken the time to reach out to you directly and thus have a fairly high interest in your services. While many of these may convert at the time of their first interaction, it is important to note down all of these inquiries and for those who provide it the various objections for not signing up for your services. Web inquiries tend to have a lower degree of interest or have limited time to invest in researching about your club, so these will be harder to reach and convert. In these cases, quick follow-up and perseverance can be particularly effective. Ideally, these will go directly into your CRM or prospecting tool, but in cases where this isn’t possible, they should be noted quickly to ensure they’re not forgotten. Generally, aim to follow-up within one business day. Step one is to interact with the prospect as soon as possible and ensure you record and track their details. From here, the next steps for lead management varies from business to business, but typically the sales journey involves a series of goals that help advance prospects from the initial inquiry to conversion. Common goals include a tour of the facility, a trial membership or attending a class to help the prospect evaluate whether the club is going to satisfy their needs. Generally, the process between these goals is fairly bespoke, with a different tact or timetable being required for each lead. With that being said, certain specific events and related timeframes can often be automated to ensure minimum procedures are followed.

Potential results from your interactions with a prospect:

• Not Interested: The lead is typically removed from the active follow-ups and only intermittently contacted as part of mass campaigns.
• Call Back: The lead is busy and reschedules a follow-up.
• Goal: The lead moves to one of your goals.
• Conversion: The lead signs up for your service.

A basic process for leads to progress from Initial Inquiry to Goal: Tour of the Facility and finally Conversion. All steps can be manual but basic automation is used below. Initial Inquiry: Entered into your Prospecting System. Name, contact details and any relevant notes. Automatic reminder for First follow-up: Notes made pertaining to the follow-up and discussion then one of the 4 actions should be taken and if unreachable the task left incomplete.

• If the client is unreachable or requests a follow up additional manual intervention will be required. E.g. schedule a call task in a week or leave lead open for follow-up the next day.
• As an aid, automated task reminders at 1 week and 2-week intervals can be helpful to ensure no leads are forgotten.

Goal: Tour of the Facility - The client is booked into the system an automated reminder is usually configured to remind the client and potentially staff member nearer the date of the booking. Notes made pertaining to the prospect tour and discussion then one of the 4 actions should be taken. Typically, additional triggers will be set to ensure that staff follow-up with leads that miss the appointment or don’t convert after the tour. General lead management rules for prospect follow-ups are that the lead should always be moving towards the next goal and/or conversion. Detailed notes should be kept to aid in conversion and later analysis. Manual reminders should be used to ensure a client is contacted at convenient times while automated triggers should be utilized to ensure steps are following and that leads aren’t forgotten. Additional steps such as tracking lead strength and detailed reporting on various prospect stages can assist with sales forecasting and improving your process but even without more detailed analysis, a basic prospecting process can greatly improve your conversion rates. Want to gain more leads for your club? Let your members do your advertising for you, click here to learn how you can encourage word-of-mouth behavior at your club.