How To Keep Track of Your Leads

I recent­ly was asked by a con­trac­tor how he could keep bet­ter track of his leads. He said he was frus­trat­ed to not real­ly know where his leads were com­ing from and did­n’t know where to start. Keep­ing track of your leads is one of the most impor­tant deci­sions you can make in your busi­ness. Track­ing your leads helps you make bet­ter mar­ket­ing deci­sions on where to place your mar­ket­ing dol­lars and where to spend more time prospect­ing or net­work­ing. Here are a few quick tips to help you get start­ed. For of all, I rec­om­mend keep­ing a dig­i­tal copy of your leads, not a notepad. If you use a notepad, make sure you trans­fer your leads into your com­put­er so you can eas­i­ly run reports in the future. 

1. Dig­i­tal Track­ing: Use a Google Spread­sheet, MS Excel or a Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) pro­gram to track your leads. When choos­ing a CRM to use for your busi­ness, make sure the lead track­ing and report­ing are strong features.
2. Track the Source: Track your leads based on the Source (i.e. Cus­tomer Refer­ral, Web­site, Door Hang­er, BNI Meet­ing, etc.)
3. Track the Dol­lars Spent: Track the esti­mat­ed dol­lar amount for each bid you do: Won and Lost. This is cru­cial. If you get 35% of your leads from your direct mail efforts but only close 10% of those leads (and the job sizes are small) this will trig­ger a reac­tion. You’ll have to make some changes to how much time and mon­ey you spend on direct mail.
4. Report­ing: Run sev­er­al reports on a month­ly basis and eval­u­ate your mar­ket­ing efforts. I have a client who can run a 10 year report on his radio cam­paigns. He can tell me how many leads he received, how many jobs sold, and the dol­lar amount of jobs sold and lost. He can also run reports that tell us what years and months were the best for his radio adver­tis­ing. After review­ing the reports togeth­er we can make an informed deci­sion on whether we’ll con­tin­ue adver­tis­ing on the radio. So far, it has been worth it!
5. Imple­ment­ing: Lead track­ing and report­ing are use­less unless you com­mit to view­ing your reports and imple­ment­ing changes when needed.

How do you cur­rent­ly track your mar­ket­ing efforts? How has it worked for you? Let me know your thoughts. I’ve just shared some sim­ple guide­lines for those who do not cur­rent track their leads.