Digital Management

How to get B2B Leads Out of the Google Analytics Network Report

March 13, 2018 by Kevin Dieny 1 Comment

Do you have B2B leads hiding in your Google Analytics Network report? Well, as long as you have website traffic and Google Analytics tracking installed, then you have these hidden leads. But who are they? Where can you to find them? What should you do with them? I’ll be addressing these questions in this post.

A few years ago, a sales manager told me that they heard it was possible to scrape B2B leads out of their web traffic. Being the analytics man that I am, I sought to find out how this could be accomplished. I discovered that this information was much easier to find out than I had originally thought. The catch (there’s always a catch, right?) is that you will not get contact information or private information.

The CAN-SPAM Act’s laws compliance prohibit scraping an email out of a website and emailing to it beyond a certain time period – it also requires that you ask for the opt-in. At some point, you must delete these leads or remove them from your emailing database if they have not opted in.

Why? I never heard of this.

Well, to receive your messaging, every single contact in your email or CRM must have opted in or done business with you at some point. This is CAN-SPAM compliance 101. Plus, as a business, you do not want to harass or annoy your potential leads.

Handle this delicately.

What I will show you is to help you build better relationships and follow-up on interested businesses. I do not recommend that you abuse or harass people who have viewed your website, remember, they have not opted in to be solicited to.

Is this method legal?

Totally! This is a white hat (legal), and totally appropriate method of identifying your website visitors by their network (which I will show can also be their business). But you don’t have to take my word for it – check out a similar article on Google’s blog for how to locate this same information. I will also show you the appropriate methods you can be using to start the conversation and how to proceed.

Should I get B2B leads out of my Google Analytics Network report?

Yes, you should. Your competition will – and it’s possible that the only thing keeping those leads from buying your products or services is not confidently knowing if you are the right business to solve or satisfy their need. Give yourself the chance to earn their business – this is just part of doing your due diligence.

OK, I want to see where my B2B leads are in my Network report!

Great… you must have completed the following for weeks/months/years prior:

[ ] Google Analytics is installed and working on my business’ website.

If not, install it now and wait a few weeks/months. Then come back here and continue.

[ ] Google Analytics is receiving website data from my Business Website.

If not, troubleshoot with your web or analytics manager to get it working, wait a few weeks/months, and then come back here to continue.

Steps on how to get the network report with B2B leads from Google Analytics

Step 1 – Google Analytics Login.

Step 2 – Go to Audience > Technology > Network.

Step 3 – Set the date/time period to a recent period (you can extend if this is your first time doing this).

Step 4 – Add exclusion networks. You need to remove any networks that are not ideal companies to do business with. For example, AT&T is an internet, phone, and television provider – if that kind of company is not who you do business with, then you need to exclude them and companies like them.

And let me tell you – there are so many! If you have a long list, take the time to identify those companies in the list that you do not consider ideal customers in your B2B space. Keep a running list and organize it into a REGEX formatted list.

Here is one to get you started (it follows the typical ignore of networks):

Step 5 – Export.

Step 6 – Organize how you see fit. Consider changing this into a Pivot Table or other usable format. It’s also worth considering adding a second dimension to see what specific pages were visited, but this creates only a sampled data set. If you desire a way to see what businesses were more valuable than others, consider filtering by the Pages / Session metric.

What to do with your new list of B2B Leads from the Network Report

Ask yourself the following questions.

If not, what information is important to know about these leads before contacting them or deciding whether or not you want to do business with them?

If not, what should you do with the information? Is it possible that your marketing or sales is attracting the wrong type of leads to the website?

If not, what information should you attempt to procure in order to contact them (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.)?

If not, how can you obtain it? What type of information is valuable to know before first contact?

If not, consider making something that can be offered during the first conversation. This can go a long way in setting the stage, but carefully consider what you are going to send them.

How you handle this type of contact says a lot about your company. You want to start every relationship you can in a good light, but you should also try to obtain as much information as possible in order to establish a better follow up strategy.

The Follow Up Strategy after Reaching out to new B2B Leads

Remember, these leads most likely have never opted in to anything from your company. You should tread lightly with these and approach them as opportunities that are already sunk. Anything you can do to raise these leads to a better light should be seen as positive. These are technically cold/warm leads, but they have not engaged enough to have given you their information yet. Check your CRM, as mentioned prior, and make sure that you have not followed up with them before.

Things to consider about the follow-up strategy:

How did the first contact go?
Was an appointment set?
Were there gatekeepers before you reached an ideal contact?
What paint points did you discover?
What solutions from your company were mentioned or suggested during the call?
What are the next steps of following up a second time?
Add your own considerations to evaluate them…

That is it! You are ready to go find those hidden leads and create your strategy around reaching out and hopefully closing some more deals. Be sure to subscribe to our blog for more insights like these.

Are My AdWords Paid Search Ads Performing Well?

March 9, 2018 by Kevin Dieny 1 Comment

How to know if your Google AdWords paid search ads are performing well and what to do about campaigns that are underperforming.

“Well paid search marketers spend their time trying to eliminate their errors. Great paid search marketers spend their time looking for new opportunities.” – Me (Kevin Dieny)

To ensure that your ads for AdWords paid searches perform well, you first need to define what “well” means for your AdWords account. To do this, you will have to ask yourself two things:

What are the right goals for each particular campaign?
How and where is success measured?

Before jumping in, I’m going to assume you know enough to be dangerous in AdWords and have the fundamentals down. If you want to learn the fundamentals or want a refresher course on Google AdWords or Paid Search, then I recommend you first jump over to Lynda.com and take the Essentials Course.

Why didn’t I recommend you take the Google AdWords Certification Course + Test? Simply put – I am not a fan. I do not think it provides the strategic mindset that is most beneficial for marketers who run AdWords accounts. For that, I recommend taking the Lynda course mentioned above or a course that gives you strategies and proper expectations for running campaigns.

Now, let’s get into it.

Launching a paid search campaign with adequate expectations

You cannot know if your AdWords campaigns are successful unless you have given them appropriate time and you have set them up for future optimization (that you plan to do). I agree with Brad Batesole, the author of the Lynda course, when he says, “A typical AdWords campaign will hit its stride in about three months.” It can be painful to look at your dashboard every day for hours on end and stare at that 0 conversion number. You need a better hobby….

Let’s start with the crucial elements you have to get right for any Adword campaign to be successful.

Ad Position – where on the Google search page your advertisements will appear, in a numbered and ordered list, where position 1 is the most desirable and 10+ is the least desirable position for your ad.
Relevance – (aka Ad Score) a mixture of the quality score based on the congruence of keywords being matched, advertisement copy being served, the landing page performance metrics, and the history of success.
Auction-Based Bidding – bidding on keywords based on the demand for each keyword at any given time, in order to be the highest bidder and win your position on the search page, so your ad is served to the searcher.

Start with the goal in mind by ensuring you design your campaigns for a single specific outcome.

First, can you go down your list of campaigns and tell me what the goal is? Yes—one singular, overarching goal. Ad Groups should be distinctly aligned to this same goal, too. Brad also suggests that you theme your campaigns – I am a fan of this, as I even distinctly theme my own ad groups to the goal and match types I am utilizing.

Once you have your goals broken out, can you identify the KPI (key performance indicator) that you will measure for them? Here is a list of goals and their typical corresponding KPI’s; remember to make yours as specific as possible:

GOAL	KPI (must be specific)
Awareness of my brand	Impressions
Traffic to my website	Unique Clicks (true click-through*)
Phone calls to my business	Clicks to call + Tracking number calls
Customers to walk into my business	Impressions, Clicks/Calls to directions
Sales	Conversions, offline-conversions

*a true click-through is when a click occurs along with a corresponding page view

Write yours down.

Great!

Now, here’s a great question to ask every time you are scoping out a new campaign. Or, you can even apply it to existing campaigns to see if they follow this rule. Who is the best audience for this goal?

First, we may need to define what am I talking about when I say audience.

Building your customer avatar or persona that aligns with your intended goal.

The best way I have ever seen a customer avatar built is from a worksheet provided by Digital Marketer. Head over there and grab their sheet because it is an amazing foundation for getting started on persona work.

Once you have your avatar built, make sure you have checked off each of steps we’ve outlined so far. It is a best practice to go step by step through your AdWords account to make sure you are not committing egregious errors and are allowing your campaigns to be successful. By eliminating your errors, you can turn your focus to more creative prospects for your account.

Make sure you can answer these questions:

What motivates your ideal customers? Be specific.
Why should your ideal customers care about your products/services? Be specific.
What is the specific pain that you want to solve for? Be specific.

Noticing a trend here?

At the heart of knowing if your AdWords ads are working is this fundamental truth of marketing – the best marketing is specific and personalized. Nine out of ten errors in AdWords campaigns are committed by being not specific enough or aligned well with your ideal customer. You have to learn your customers’ pains, their identities, and ultimately how they search online (what keywords or slang they use).

What does this kind of specific look like?

Well, imagine that you said my ideal customer is 30 to 45 years old, usually a female, and works full-time. That’s broad – you can do better. So let’s enhance that.

Now you say well… actually, our best customers are usually 40 to 45-year-old females who are married to white-collar partners. Both work full-time, and they need to live within 45 minutes of my stores. That’s better, but you can still get more specific!

Always start as precise as possible and adjust back the specificity if you need more impressions or are finding you have missed the mark. So let’s again enhance what we already have in this example by adding that our ideal customers are those families who make more than $50,000 a year, use their phones primarily for searching, rely on reviews, are price sensitive, and browse the internet while at work and call during their lunchtime. Bam! That is a lot better. Of course, you could always go deeper, but this works. Here are some categories to get you started:

Age
Gender
Marital Status
Education Level
Primary/Secondary Language
Location
Job Title
Income
Industry
Family Makeup
Technology Usage
Web Access
And so much more…

Eliminate Errors (check) Time to Refine

I’ve already touched on how it’s an acceptable norm to give your AdWords campaigns at least three months (90 days) to adjust. If you skimp on this, you will likely always see poor results and give up completely on trying to get sustainable wins in AdWords.

But I want to get more detailed now that we have the basics out of the way. The crux of the problem isn’t that you need to be the best AdWords marketer ever. Instead, it is simply to find out if your ads are working well. “Well” in this context means that you’ve got your kinks and errors worked out and now you are just trying to refine.

Here is my list of refinements in the order that I would assess your account:

Am I familiar enough with the AdWords interface to know where to go to find my KPI metrics that I have planned for my goals?
Do I have a report with my KPI metrics along with the corresponding campaigns/ad groups/ads and keywords for the desired specific goals?
What are my quality scores for my ads?
Do my ads need better relevance?
Have I set up and optimized my landing pages for the advertisements?
Have I set up and tested my conversion tracking to ensure that I am receiving conversions into my AdWords account?

1) Familiarity with AdWords

To get more familiar with the platform such as where everything is located, where to go to answer your question, etc., you simply have to spend time in there. Google has a plethora of guides and searchable help to lead you where you need to go. AdWords has the capability of solving more questions. If you are still stumped, there is also the reliable online search to perform.

2) Report Building

AdWords has a new(ish) reporting feature built right in that you can use to search for and build reports based on your own campaigns. I caution you that it does take some getting used to, so start playing around with your reports. Look online for examples of reports others have made for good examples. Try not to overdo your reports – stick with your KPIs.

3) Quality Scores

Quality scores are attached to keywords, but they also correspond to your ad copy and the destination landing page. Quality score is Google’s measure of how relevant the experience of the user is to the ad. The higher the score, the less you pay. This is set up this way because Google wants to give users the best advertisement experience they can. The more people spend on ads, the more money they make – and they will only do so if it’s a good environment to do.

4) Relevance

Try to make the experience of the person clicking on your ad seamless from start to finish. You want the colors and the wording to be as similar as possible. Manage their expectations. If you tell them they will be learning more, then teach them! Do not ram a lead magnet down their throat. If you say, “see the difference?” then show them the difference. It’s shocking how much these tenets are violated.

5) Landing Page Optimization

Starting at the end, go to your landing page and see what keywords are the most common on the page. Do you have a privacy policy and/or a terms and conditions link available to visitors on that page? Do you have your contact information located on that page?

You also need to make sure the page loads quickly, does not have damaging pop-ups and that the copy of the page aligns with your keywords and your ad copy. There is a lot that can go into landing page optimization, but I will save that for another article.

6) Conversion Tracking

You have two places you need to go to ensure that you have setup your conversion tracking. First, your tracking code (tag manager) needs to deploy the tracking event. Second, your AdWords account should have a conversion setup. Go to the conversion menu inside AdWords and make sure this is set up with a value. To finish, test it and make sure it fires and all the data is recorded accurately. Your AdWords will be lightyears more accurate if you are tracking your conversions into AdWords.

Now what, I’ve done everything!

If you can check off each list, I’ve delivered and are still having issues of knowing whether or not your ads are working well, then consider these big-picture metrics. Aim for the best but always try to make fine adjustments over months of time (things won’t work better overnight most of the time unless you goofed). Remember, what truly matters is making your goal happen.

Ask yourself if you have the below industry standard metrics. If your answers are “yes,” you are probably doing well and have enough information for a decision of whether or not to change something:

A click-through rate above 2%?
An average position at or below 1.9? (1.0 is killing it!)
Keyword quality scores at or above 7?
Impressions above 1000?

Notice I didn’t say anything about the cost per click, conversion rate, view-through conversion rates, match types, search terms, or ad extensions. This is because this is very subjective to your individual campaign. A guide that delves into these has to consider that if you are using them, it aligns with your goal. Congruence with your goal is key. I would recommend evaluating your search terms report and taking advantage of your ad extensions… but how you go about maximizing this depends on your campaign goal.

You need always to be striving to find new customers. But showing the right relevant message and keeping your campaigns specific takes patience; optimization takes time. Learning to be patient is the only pain I cannot give any advice on. It’s not easy.

Thanks, I hope that now you can say, “Now I know I need to define what well means for my campaigns before I can see if they are performing,” and “I know how to find out what success is for my AdWords account.” If you have questions, comments, or ideas, feel free to add them to the community to see in the comments section below.

Does Your Business Have Text-Enabled Phone Numbers? It Should.

March 7, 2018 by Cassie Ciopryna Leave a Comment

In a time where we’re texting more than ever, it is vital that consumers have that ability with your business, too.

When was the last time you sent a text message?

Well, if you’re like the average American, it was probably within the past twenty-four hours, since Pew Internet reports that 97% of Americans text at least once a day.

With how much we all seem to have our smartphone attached at our hip, why wouldn’t your business want to take advantage of achieving and retaining more customers through this device that seemingly runs our lives?

Although we mostly text for personal reasons, there are ways for businesses to also use this form of communication to increase business performance and profit.

Appointment Reminders

Hopefully, you already have an appointment reminder system in place, but think of how much more efficiently and cost-effectively your business can run with automatic text appointment reminders for clients. Text reminders can free up time for call takers who usually have to dial numerous outbound calls and talk to or leave voicemails for your customers to focus on other tasks.

When text messages have an almost 100 percent open rate, you are more likely to ensure that your customer got your reminder rather than wondering if that voicemail you left will just be another unopened notification on their smartphone.

Texting Campaigns

But texting appointment reminders aren’t the only way to ensure that you have more customers showing up for a booked appointment. With text-enabled numbers, it makes it easier than ever to start a text campaign for your dealership.

Have a list of past customers who have booked with you but haven’t seen in a while? Direct mail pieces may work, but what about a text campaign with a reminder or offer for those customers to use your business again? Email and direct mail aren’t exactly a thing of the past (yet), but text messaging could be one of your most successful future campaigns.

With a 111% growth in SMS usage in 2016 as reported by Salesforce, a majority of marketers use mobile and SMS marketing channels to engage customers. They’ve also reported that 77% of marketing leaders say that mobile marketing (including SMS, push notifications, mobile apps, and other) generates ROI for their company – compared to 31% in 2015.

With those kinds of statistics, what’s stopping you from developing your own SMS campaigns?

Customer Service

Think about how many times you’ve called a business just to be placed on hold or put in a queue for the next available representative. What if you could contact that business by texting them instead to ask your simple question? Which would you prefer?

Well, a study shows that over half of consumers would prefer texting over a phone call for reaching customer support. We all lead busy lives, and according to many statistics, our attention spans are becoming shorter than ever – so why not make it easier for your busy customers or leads to reach you via SMS?

Ready to start using text-enabled numbers for your business? Contact a CallSource representative today to get your numbers and start texting!

Why Online Reviews Are Important for SEO

February 22, 2018 by Cassie Ciopryna Leave a Comment

You know online reviews are important for your business’ reputation – but did you know they can assist your SEO efforts as well?

Online reviews.

SEO.

Google.

Keywords.

Ranking.

Are you sick of these terms yet? Well, if you are a marketer or business owner, you need to embrace them. Whether you want them to or not, they have a lot of pull when it comes to your business’ success (especially in the online world – which some people may be more involved with on a regular basis than the actual real world).

Although the world of SEO is ever-changing, there are still habits to be made and key areas that will always be important (at least we think so). And let’s face it; being proactive in at least one of these areas is never going to have a negative impact on your online presence.

I’ve already talked about why online reviews are important for your business’ online reputation, what to do when you receive negative online reviews and how to properly respond to them, but have yet to cover another positive influence that online reviews can have for your business – an increase in your search engine optimization efforts.

Yes, it’s true. Having your customers do the work for you by writing reviews for your business will have a positive impact on your SEO—especially when it’s reported that reviews account for about 10% of your total ranking factors. Why? How? Let’s get into it.

Long Tail Keywords

Keywords are important determining factors for how consumers find your content on the web. What are they searching to reach your business? What needs or wants do they have that you provide the solution for? You should be aware of what keywords to be targeting in not only your paid search but also your organic search as well.

But besides using your own created content to drive consumers to find your business, online reviews can also help you in this component of SEO.

What exactly are long tail keywords, you ask? They are typically three-to-four word searches or phrases that visitors are typing in their search bar to look for what it is they want or need to purchase. Long tail keywords focus on consumers that are later in the buying journey (typically BOFU, or bottom of funnel leads) and know specifically what they are looking for.

Since reviewers have already purchased from or had an experience with your company, it is likely that they will be mentioning some of your long tail keywords in their review – which will help when other consumers are searching for solutions or products for those same phrases. Not only will it bring them to your company, but also show that you are a reputable and reliable source for their need.

Relevant & Recent Content

Piggy-backing off of long tail keywords, online reviews also contribute relevant content on the web about your business and continuously give the internet recent content about your company as well.

Sure, perhaps you are constantly creating new blog articles, lead magnets or web pages with good keywords and relevant content, but reviews will do this for you in addition to your own work – and without any effort! When someone else is writing content for you and about you, it will improve your rankings as well as improve your online review rating. What’s better than that?

Increase in Traffic

Consumer searches for something they need.

Consumer clicks on review website to find the best company to provide what they are looking for.

Consumer finds your company as highest-ranked with the most recent reviews.

Consumer goes to your website.

It’s pretty simple, right? So why wouldn’t you work on increasing your online review presence when it’ll drive more potential customers to your website?

Besides getting more leads coming on your site – websites with higher traffic receive better relevancy scores for their SEO. If people are searching and clicking through to your site more often, then Google sees that as “good” and will increase your ranking.

Visibility on Review Sites

This one is a no-brainer.

Achieve more online reviews, and show up more on review sites.

If you are looking for Thai food and go to Yelp and type in “Thai” in your area, what are you going to see first? The restaurant with the most reviews or highest ranking – it’s that simple.

The more reviews you have, the more you will show up not only in regular searches but in peoples’ searches on particular review websites as well. And when roughly 85% of consumers reported reading online reviews and about 67% of them read 6 reviews or less before they form an opinion about a given business – you want your business showing up as an option.

So why delay collecting online reviews when they can help so much? Speak to a CallSource representative today to see how we can help you increase your online presence with great reviews.

Managing Client Acquisition Constraints

January 29, 2018 by Cassie Ciopryna Leave a Comment

The ultimate goal of your business is to acquire new customers and make sales – but how do you figure out the areas of your business that may be preventing this from happening to its best capacity?

Business exists in a world of big data.

This sounds exciting on the surface, but what does it really mean? The more information we have available, the easier it becomes to make the right decisions – or so it seems.

Unfortunately, big data all too often leads to clutter. Instead of clarity, we have noise. Instead of using data to guide the business we find ourselves working in the business reacting to events.

“The capacity [of your business] is equal to the capacity of its bottlenecks”
-Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Focusing on the metrics that matter is the remedy to the weight of big data.

In Eliyahu M. Godratt’s book, “The Goal,” he introduces us to the theory of constraints. Though the book reads like a novel and uses a factory as its business, this theory can still be applied to your business as well.

Basically, the theory of constraints states that the step within a process with the smallest capacity – the constraint – dictates throughput.

But what does that mean? Let’s get right into it.

Throughput and Business Growth

In the client acquisition cycle, the “throughput” is revenue (do I have your attention now?).

Revenue represents success in acquiring and onboarding new clients – the fuel to sustaining business growth. Businesses inevitably lose existing clients over time. Without actively working to acquire new clients, businesses will eventually contract.

Avoid Throughput Conflict

Organizations preferring to use a metric other than revenue as throughput need to identify the target.

Throughput must be an appreciable, objectively measured target that is the goal of a cycle or process.

Businesses that focus on high blended ticket value will shift their strategy to higher paying prospects. Marketing tactics will be altered to avoid lower paying prospects. Marketing becomes responsible for motivating the right prospects to respond and not the total prospect responses.

Client acquisitions will be reduced by avoiding smaller sales. This can be accomplished by an outright refusal to serve low need prospects or increasing basic service fees to dissuade lower paying consumers from becoming clients.

Setting goals of acquiring as many new clients as possible and simultaneously raising the blended average ticket value creates a conflict of Throughput.

These conflicts can be navigated by carefully designing goals – defining Throughput – based on the best interests of your organization. Revenue works by establishing Throughput that avoids conflicts.

Other organizations may focus on a different metric. New client acquisition may be the right Throughput for organizations that are focused on increasing market share (e.g. a new business).

The key is ensuring that each departmental goal works in collaboration with the other.

The Relationship Sales Cycle

The client acquisition cycle can be broken into several linear steps. Any step can act as a constraint, straining efforts to grow the business.

A business’ ability to acquire new clients efficiently is reduced due to the constraint. Expensive client acquisition costs, missed growth targets, and reduced throughput are the results of constraints.

Client acquisition, and business growth, can be likened to a manufacturing assembling line.

Manufacturing requires each unit produced be processed by a series of individual machines before the end goal of sales throughput is achieved – sales throughput being the final sale of the unit to the end customer.

The machine with the smallest capacity dictates the number of units produced.

For example, if machines A and B have a capacity of 100 units, machine C a capacity of 50 units, and machine D’s capacity is 500 units, only 50 units can be produced. Maximizing machines A and B to their fullest potential will still yield only 50 units to throughput. Machine C cannot process more than its limited capacity.

The relationship sales cycle is a similar process. Client acquisition for businesses engaged in relationship sales tends to have a longer cycle, as opposed to transactional sales. Understanding the individual steps and the steps influence the process overall helps create a manageable process.

The steps include:

Awareness
Connection
Evaluation
Acquisition + Scheduling
Throughput

Each client acquisition navigates through these steps. Each step is measured discretely.

The above example demonstrates how a constraint negatively impacts new client acquisition and revenue. Each step is individually measured providing insight into where the constraint exists and where we should target our resources. The constraint is found in the second step of the process. The Connection step is dictating Throughput or the revenue earned.

All other scores remain constant. The number of Acquisitions remains at 85% of Evaluations, for example.

Awareness

Measurement: Prospects Calls

Generating leads is the first step in acquiring customers. Businesses cannot grow beyond the number of leads generated (this may seem obvious).

Any activity intended to create awareness of the business, including a website, digital ads, direct mail, print ads, networking, etc. comprises this step. This is the marketing activity.

Success in this activity means driving prospect response, or garnering prospect calls.

The marketing dollars are used to “purchase” prospect calls, appointments, and ultimately new clients. New client revenue can be expressed as the monetization of the dollars invested in marketing efforts.

Although the intent of marketing dollars is to drive revenue from client acquisition, prospect calls are the measurement of success for this step as all the other steps directly influence client acquisition.

Prospect calls indicate the effectiveness of marketing activity.

In the scenario illustrated above, the same volume of prospect calls based on the same marketing budget and activity occurs, yet different Throughputs are achieved. A common response is to purchase additional prospect calls with additional dollars to make up for the revenue drop off. This results in expensive client acquisition costs.

The ability to effectively monetize the marketing investment becomes out of balance. Marketing costs comprise a higher portion of the overall cost of gaining new clients.

Marketing as a Constraint

Marketing efforts, or the Awareness stage, acts as a constraint if all other steps are operating efficiently. As the first step in the client acquisition cycle, it effectively caps the number of opportunities.

If 100 prospect calls are generated, client acquisition opportunities are limited to 100 for the time period being measured.

Setting goals for each phase helps identify the constraint. If the organization is hitting its conversion rate target (Connection Phase) then this can be eliminated as the constraint. If it is determined that all other steps are meeting their targets, and the business wants to grow beyond its current rate, then marketing should be examined.

Even if it is determined that marketing is not the constraint, additional marketing may succeed in expanding the number of prospect opportunities. Careful analysis will determine if this is the appropriate option based on individual circumstance.

Connection

Measurement: Conversion Rate

Secondary Measurements:

Brand Experience
Outbound Calls

Setting the appointment is the second step in generating sales throughput.

The Connection phase is the first time the organization has direct contact with a prospective new client. If the opportunity is handled effectively the relationship advances by setting an appointment for an evaluation. Being ineffective may result in permanently losing the opportunity.

Some clients may focus on setting a specific number of appointments, but the conversion rate provides a clearer picture if appointment setting is a constraint.

The total number of appointments set is impacted, positively or negatively, by marketing response rates and seasonality.

Below-average conversion rates indicate appointment setting is a constraint. In the example above, even a relatively small drop will have a significant negative impact on client acquisition and revenue. The longer the constraint exists the more expensive it becomes.

Call handler skills are likely lacking in one or more areas. Identifying opportunities for skills training is important. CallSource recommends setting specific goals for call handlers and reviewing scores on a regular basis.

Connection Outcomes

There are three prospect outcomes to the Connection phase: Fostered, Lost, or Nurtured.

Fostering the relationship is setting the appointment on the initial call. The prospect has the opportunity to become a client during the evaluation stage. The call handler succeeded. A positive brand experience was provided and the relationship is progressing, which is the goal of the stage.

A lost opportunity occurs when the prospect has a brand experience that does not meet their needs. A high risk of defection to a competitor exists.

Nurturing the relationship occurs when the prospect is not able to set an appointment on the initial call, but has a positive brand experience. This encourages them to book when they are ready to move forward. Some industries lead nurturing plays a small role and other industries it is essential.

Lead nurturing often occurs when the caller is conducting research on behalf of someone else, such as a parent or partner. Schedules will need to be confirmed prior to booking an appointment.

Conversion rate is a vital leading indicator of success even in industries with a significant lead nurturing need. Conversion rate is arguably the most important indicator of performance in most industries and especially those that must book on the initial call or lose the prospect.

A high success rate on the initial call translates into more appointments booked overall.

Brand Experience

Prospects form immediate opinions of the business during the initial call.

A positive brand experience means the call handler effectively communicated the value of the business.

If questions were not adequately answered, if the call handler sounded indifferent, or an appointment was not offered the prospect will likely not set an appointment. They may defect to a competitor or decline to seek service at all.

CallSource measures the brand experience using the Telephone Performance Analysis, or TPA. A strong brand experience has a higher likelihood of setting an appointment. Conversely, a weaker experience has a higher rate of missed opportunities. This results in a longer acquisition cycle or a constraint.

Outbound Calls

Recapturing missed opportunities is the second aspect of eliminating appointment setting as a constraint. Even businesses with strong conversion rates and provide a positive brand experience will have some missed opportunities.

Maximizing appointment setting to its fullest potential reduces limitations to business growth and maximizes marketing spends. Outbound calls to missed opportunities reduce defection rates and prospects that will not move forward any service.

A missed opportunity is a prospect that expresses an interest in a product or service but does not book an appointment for a specific day and time.

Should a poor brand experience occur, it is imperative to reach out to the missed opportunity and correct that experience.

Lead nurturing campaigns include outbound calling. These missed opportunities are prospects genuinely interested in a service but were prevented from booking an appointment on the initial call. Successful lead nurturing requires an active approach. Passively waiting for the prospect to call again is a lead nurturing strategy based on hope.

Outbound calling missed opportunities boost the effectiveness and expands the capacity of the Connection step.

Evaluation

During the evaluation step, the prospect’s needs are determined.

The evaluation may determine that some prospects do not require service. This is not an example of a constraint. This is a lead nurturing opportunity. When the person will benefit from being served there is a likelihood they will return to this organization due to the positive brand experience (or refer someone).

The Evaluation constraint typically comes in two forms: cancelled appointments and the inability to move the prospect to pay for a beneficial service.

Appointment Cancellations

A high rate of cancelled appointments undermines the effectiveness of the first two steps in the client acquisition process. The marketing provided a prospect response. The call handler moved the prospect to setting an appointment.

Appointment reminders may be effective. This is a valuable and low investment effort to motivating prospects to keep their appointments. Prospects booking future appointments (not same day) will benefit most. A simple call the day before may be all that is needed. If the prospect is required to travel to the business for the appointment, ensuring (S)he has transportation may be helpful.

Sales

Not every professional prefers to consider him/herself a salesperson. Yet every success business organization requires sales.

Sales is simply moving someone to purchase a product or service that benefits that individual. Moving the prospect toward a purchase requires effective communication. Communication is not complete until the listener receives – hears and understands – the message.

Communication may be the issue if the constraint is at the evaluation stage.

Is your communication effort unnecessarily complex (jargon or abstract language)?
Have the benefits of service been clearly articulated?
Do you understand the prospect’s reluctance?
Have you made a full effort to understand the prospect?

Improving sales requires altering approaches and experimentation. New efforts may not immediately gel. Being prepared to learn what works, and what does not, is a necessary part of the sales process.

Acquisition and Scheduling Capacity

Some businesses have grown beyond their ability to actually schedule the service for all prospects. Scheduling availability essentially determines or limits the size of the business in these cases.

In these situations, the marketing is effective and connection phase is not an issue.

When 80% of scheduling capacity is reached, businesses start considering their options.

Many CallSource clients would love to have the problem of filling all available appointments. Appointment slots are a perishable product. At the end of the week any unused appointment times can never be sold. The revenue that could have been generated from those unused appointment slots will never be generated.

Businesses that reach their maximum scheduling capacity must turn away some customers. These unscheduled prospects may be permanently lost customers.

Expanding scheduling capacity may not always be feasible for any number of reasons. This is especially true if scheduling capacity is a constraint during brief peak seasons. It rarely makes business sense to boost capacity for only a short period.

Businesses Not Increasing Scheduling Capacity

Reduced marketing
Larger customers
Increased fees

Businesses purchase prospects with their marketing. The phone does not ring for free. Prospects that are turned away represent a wasted cost.

If a client does not wish to expand scheduling capacity they have some options. Reduced marketing is an obvious choice. Reviewing current marketing and eliminating underperforming sources is a worthy exercise. Cut marketing costs immediately improves the bottom line. The client no longer purchases prospects that are ultimately wasted.

Clients still need to market their business. Cutting marketing too much, too quickly, may lead to a lack of prospects. Any reduction in marketing should be a methodical process.

An overabundance of prospects allows businesses the luxury of being selective. Turning away low margin prospects to focus on higher paying customers may reduce scheduling constraints. Since there is a scarcity of appointment slots, the value of the appointment increases. Businesses should understand the value of their appointments and strategize accordingly. This will not increase scheduling capacity, but may help boost revenues by granting appointments to higher paying customers only.

Raising fees will need to be considered against market forecasts and branding concepts.

The prospect is not actually acquired unless they can be scheduled.

Shifting Constraints

Growth constraints may shift over time. This may be temporary, signal an emerging problem, or due to fixing a previous constraint.

Marketing or scheduling may act as a temporary constraint due to seasonality. Conversion rates may ebb and flow due to a number of factors. Acts of intervention are unnecessary for temporary issues.

Expanding the capacity in one area may make another area in the sales assembly line the constraint point, even if its capacity remains steady.

Marketplaces change overtime. A commitment to monitoring the metrics enables business leaders to identify constraints and take action.

Operational Capacity

Although not directly part of the sales process, a business’ operational capacity impacts growth.

Time resources are one example of operational constraint. A Business leader may only be able to successfully manage a business of a particular size. Business growth requires the investment of managers beyond this point. Business owners may be reluctant to invest in operational support due to the added risk. Talent limitation is another area of operational constraint.

As a business advisor, we may not be able to address these issues directly, it is important to be aware of such limitations as you work with clients.

Understanding Throughput

Throughput cannot be controlled. The end result of any process can never be controlled. It is a lagging indicator of the preceding steps in the process.

The leading indicators – the steps in the client acquisition process coming before throughput – can be controlled. Focusing time, energy, and resources toward correcting growth constraints will positively impact business growth.

4 Ways You Are Preventing Your Business from Succeeding

January 18, 2018 by Cassie Ciopryna Leave a Comment

Stop doing these 4 things if you want to improve your business.

A friend of mine likes to pull pranks on her co-worker.

From squirting water guns at her cubicle, to prank phone calls, and even a fake Craigslist ad for a yard sale at her colleague’s house (don’t worry, she didn’t actually publish it)…seriously, she doesn’t have many boundaries.

Recently, my friend sent me some videos of the most recent prank she was setting up for her poor, patient, co-worker before she was returning to the office the following day from her maternity leave. The videos processed my friend pouring Jell-O powder and hot water into various objects (think Tupperware, office coffee mug, etc) and proceeding to drop random desk supplies (think pen, stapler, etc.) into said future-Jell-O holders.

I have to admit, it’s pretty funny.

I know you’re probably wondering: “OK, but what does this have to do with me and my business? I thought I came to your blog for business insights, not random people’s office pranks.” And yes, I do have a point: do you have people or programs in place (or a lack thereof) in your office acting as barriers to getting work done?

What are your office Jell-O molds?

If you went to use your stapler and it was congealed in Jell-O, it would be quite obvious there that there is a barrier between you and the object that you need to use to get work done. But these figurative “Jell-O molds” may not be as transparent. So I’m here to help you figure out what they may be.

“Good organizations want to be more profitable and successful, and in order to properly do that, you have to compare where you were to where you will be or are now.”

Below are four ways that you may be unaware are actually hindering you from achieving goals, making more money, overall office productivity and, ultimately, keeping you complacent by not aiding in business improvement.

Not Setting Goals

Sure, you may be busy in your day-to-day activities, but why be happy when you are constantly putting out fires or “saving the day” with last minute fixes instead of having a long term plan and sticking to it?

You can be busy every single day at work, but unless the work you doing is actually propelling your business forward in some way, it’s not really helping you improve at all. Spending time getting a pen out of set Jell-O may be getting something done, but what is it really accomplishing to better your business?

It is far more productive to set goals and then reach those goals, rather than get caught up in the same types of duties every day.

Are there any consistent problems arising that you keep fixing? Why not instead brainstorm a way to solve the problem and create more time to focus on more important, business-serving tasks in the future to keep setting more goals and aiming higher?

In his article “4 Reasons You Need to Set Business Goals,” Michael A. Olguin states that the following are important reasons to be setting goals within your business:

Measure Success – Good organizations want to be more profitable and successful, and in order to properly do that, you have to compare where you were to where you will be or are now.
Leadership Team Cohesion – Everyone needs to understand where your leadership team is coming from and what the over-arching goals of the company are so that all teams and employees are on the same page.
Knowledge is Power – The more you know, the more you can grow. It is always better to have more information than not enough information, and setting goals ensures that you will have to do a bit more research and have more knowledge about your company.
Reassess Goals Mid-Year – Just because you set goals doesn’t mean you are done. You need to continuously be reassessing your current goals and seeing if any need to be adjusted, as well as how you are doing in achieving the goals you set, or if you are behind and have some catching up to do.

As you can see, not setting goals is a major barrier for business improvement.

Over-Tasked Management & Employees

Getting the tools employees need to do their jobs out of their Jell-O jail takes up precious time and adds another task to the already-full pile employees have.

While it is of course a great idea to have managers and employees cross-trained and informed with as much knowledge and skills as possible, it is still vital that job duties are focused and streamlined so that no one is overloaded with too many duties, prohibiting them from focusing and completing their most important tasks.

For example, while you may have a small office that requires a call taker to also be working on spreadsheets and other internal duties, they will not have the focus or time to really dedicate to answering their phone calls and having the best conversations in order to book the appointment as someone whose sole duty is to answer in bound calls and make as many appointments as possible to turn into sales for your company.

Usually the excuse for this bad behavior is that the business does not have enough money to hire extra employees to take on these additional tasks. But if you really do the math—how much would a few extra sales per month mean for your business? If an employee focused on setting appointments could make 5 extra sales a month, which could cover an additional salary PLUS some, don’t you think that will be worth it in the long run?

But don’t just take my word for it – multitasking has been proven to be a productivity killer in other scenarios as well. With effort and focused employees and job descriptions, your business will ultimately be more successful.

Not Tracking Your Data

It doesn’t mean quite as much if you set goals and make decisions to better your company if those decisions are based solely on opinion and gut feelings rather than actual data.

If you aren’t tracking your data, then you can’t say with certainty whether or not your employees are performing effectively, if you are making good marketing decisions, or if money is being allocated in the right areas for your business.

This is how CallSource helps our clients—by tracking how successful your marketing is performing you can tell if you are getting leads into your office and also how well your employees are doing at converting those leads into sales, as well as giving data on how well your employees are performing with the goals being set and where to focus for improvement. Just like you want to know where to perform better, you also don’t want to waste your efforts in areas that you are doing well in.

No or Low Focus on Internal Improvement

Hiring qualified candidates shouldn’t be where you stop with making sure that your employees are the best. Whether someone has 10 days or 10 years’ experience in their position, there is always room for improvement. If you aren’t focused on your employees’ improvement, why will they want to invest in their own improvement as well?

Better skilled employees make for more successful businesses. This goes hand-and-hand with setting goals—if your employees have specific individual and team goals that you are setting for them, these will force them to work on bettering their own skills. Investment needs to be an endless loop—invest in your employees and their success and improvement, and they will in turn invest more into working their best for your company. If you need incentive ideas for your team, we have a few non-cash ideas we’ve previously talked about here.

Ready to start helping your business succeed? That’s what CallSource is here for! Talk to a CallSource Representative today to see how CallSource can help you.