The Selling Essentials Minute, Ep. 15: Green Leads

Welcome back to the Selling Essentials Minute!

The Selling Essentials Minute is a series of videos that offers one sales idea in about sixty seconds. You can use the Minute to kick off a sales meeting, push an idea out to your team, start a discussion or reinforce your training.

On today’s episode: Many sales pros would be tempted to abandon leads who say they aren’t interested. But most of those leads just need time and nurturing before they’re ready to buy. To find out more, watch today’s episode.

Video Transcript:

How many times have you heard this “marketing’s done it again”, how they expect us to follow up leads like these. 

Many sales pros will be tempted to abandon those leads especially when a month goes by or two months or three months and  you’re still hearing I’m not really interested. But research shows those leads aren’t bad, they’re just green. A lead is a lot like a tomato, some are ready to pick but others need time to ripen from an inedible emerald vegetable into a red juicy delicious sale.

How long does it take? Well, according to James Obermeyer of the sales lead management association, for every 100 qualified leads 45 eventually buy from someone within a year and what’s most important to remember is that those purchases evenly distributed throughout that year roughly 4 per month.

So, rather than quit the field, put on your farmers hat and cultivate those leads. Mark your calendar and follow up periodically. That way when those sales ripen, you’ll be right there to reap the harvest.

Of course your hard won’t always result in that big luscious ruby red sale, but abandon that crop before  it’s ripe and what you can expect from your boss is rotten tomatoes.

By the way, you can also check out this and every previous episode of The Selling Essentials Minute by subscribing to it on iTunes (write us a review while you’re there!) or YouTube.