The number one reason why more advertisers or lead buyers don’t close on more leads that they either receive from an online ad or buy is that they don’t “work” the leads properly.

You might be one of those who receives leads every day only to not know how to work them to their fullest potential. Maybe you rely on simply sending a quick email response or even worse, utilize mass email programs that send a generic response to a prospect thinking this will magically close them. This method will not close as many leads as you could if you followed a few steps that I’ve outlined below.

TECHNOLOGY: Don’t rely on technology to sell for you. Email blasts, email auto-responders and auto-dialers are great, but they don’t do the actual selling in many cases. People do actual selling, and if your product and / or the service that you are pitching needs to be “sold”, then it is time you get on the phone live. Keep in mind, the worst that can happen is that the potential prospect might say “no” or maybe even hang up on you. Please don’t let that get you down. Honestly, I’ve been hung up on so many times that it doesn’t even faze me anymore.

SALES PITCH: If you’re reading a pitch that you either downloaded from a website or even if it is from the company’s website that you bought your home-based business opportunity, distributorship opportunity or small franchise from, please stop now. Reading from a scripted pitch is the kiss of death in my opinion. Try and write your own. Then go ahead and experiment with old leads, ones that you know you might not close, so you can work out the kinks. You can even modify the generic one you downloaded to make it a bit more personal. If you must read entirely from a scripted pitch, then at least try to memorize it.

QUALIFYING QUESTIONS: If you don’t know what a “qualifying question” is and you’re making cold calls, you’re in too much trouble for me to help you out here. So this is for those of you who know what I mean…if you don’t, you’ve got work to do. Make a list of the basic qualifying questions that you should ask that pertain to your product and / or service. As you become more comfortable, you can write more complex qualifying questions that you can then work on with prospects that are savvier than average.

REJECTION: Sure, you might get hung up on and even get yelled at a few times in your cold-calling career. The real truth is that many people you contact might be having a bad day or their car might have broken down, and they’re facing a bill that they didn’t see coming and are in no mood to talk about spending more money at that time. None of this has anything to do with your call that day or your product and / or service. You just happened to reach them at a bad time. Make note of it and call back in a few weeks. You need to ask a lot of questions when you’re trying to sell by phone to understand the needs of the prospect. You might even want to try asking questions you’ll know they’ll say ”yes” to in order to get the sales call off to a good start. Plus, many studies have shown that when a potential prospect says “yes” more than five times in any one conversation, they are very likely to buy from you. In almost all cases, stay away from questions that you know will be answered as a “no” unless you are very comfortable with cold-calling in general. Repetition is the key in this case. The more you do it, your flow will become better, you’ll ask better questions and in return, your prospect will ask you more questions. Additionally, you’ll become better at conveying the information you want to get across, which will ultimately help you close your prospects.

FOLLOW UP: You need to follow up with a live phone call to reintroduce yourself, the company, product and / or service you’re selling every so often. My suggestion is to do so once every two weeks just to reiterate what you have to offer and, ultimately, how it will benefit them. I’ve also found “dripping” information to prospects via individual, non-generic emails over time can eventually convert some of those who were sitting on the fence initially or who wanted to “learn more” when they initially signed up for that lead. I stay in contact with people for what most would consider an extended period of time, but it works for me and develops a “relationship”, one that keeps the business opportunity top-of-mind so that when they are ready, they remember me and get in touch.

Time to pick up the phone, make some calls and get to work!