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Lackluster in Business Growth? Re-evaluate Close Rate and Retention - Featured image

Lackluster in Business Growth? Re-evaluate Close Rate and Retention

In business, if you are not growing, you’re dying. Why?

Your income will stay the same, if not going down.

You won’t have a budget to develop new products and improve the existing ones.

You can’t provide more for your employees. That leads to them looking for a better job.

You’ll lose employees that are hungry to grow.

Your competitions are always ahead of you.

Change is constant – marketing and sales techniques, new online marketing tools and apps, as well as the buying journey of your customers. In order for a company to stay in business for a very long time, it needs to grow.

If you are now frustrated because your business is slowly growing or not growing at all. Here’s what you should do.

Reevaluate your close rate and retention.

You may have added a new tool or implemented a new marketing strategy but still getting low close rate? It’s about time you reevaluate your close rate and retention.

What is a close rate?

Close rate = (total number of sales / number of leads) x 100

In order to understand close rate better, let’s discuss the meaning of a sale and a lead.

A sale is a transaction between two people/ company where the buyer receives the goods in exchange for money. A lead, on the other hand, is a person or a business that expresses its interest in purchasing your product or services.

Close rate depends on the quality of leads. There are 3 types of leads:

  1. Cold lead – very low interest.
  2. Warm lead – has interest but the buying decision is a long process.
  3. Hot lead – interest and would purchase right away.

Related:  Assess your Sales Leads: Is it Hot, Warm or Cold?

If the leads that you are getting from either inbound or outbound marketing are all warm and hot leads, chances are you’ll have better sales. If your close rate is 60-80%, your business is doing well. But for how long?

For example:

Total sales for the month = 20

Total leads for the month = 100

You only have 20% close rate.

These numbers will pull your business down. So make sure to have enough high-quality leads to have the higher close rate. What else? Reevaluate your customer retention.

In business, your goal is to maintain a high retention rate. Higher retention rate means you have

  • many loyal customers
  • better customer service

What is customer retention rate?

Retention Rate = {(number of customers at end of period – number of new customers acquired during period) / number of customers at start of period} x 100

We all want a 100% customer retention rate. But having at least 85-90% is a good number.

Related: Show Customer Care with Inbound Lead Qualification

Customers come and go, regardless of the reason and you can’t do anything about it. While satisfying your existing customers, your team must continue looking for new customers to replace some of the customers you’ve lost and will eventually lose.

If you want your business to grow and stay ahead with their competitors, always keep track of your close rate and retention rate. This will help you know the problem and find out a solution before it’s too late.

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tools for Businesses in Australia

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia

Did you know that the word “nice” used to meant “foolish” or “frivolous” and later became “finicky” or “fussy” not until the 1700s did it come to mean “pleasing” or “pleasant”.

In business and in the techno sphere, the word “hacking” used to connote a negative meaning as to gain access to a computer illegally, but as the world evolved with new technologies the word “hacking” now flaunts a much sensible, positive meaning as to manage successfully and even compounded with the word growth which is now a business jargon growth hacking”. Wonder how it came be? Then hack some information from here.

What’s more important is that growth hacking has become an essential part of business, the marketing aspect per se. The hacks or strategies are carefully planned out by the hackers or the marketers to come up with the best growth hacking lead generation tools for businesses. Take a look a some of these below:

For Startups from Startup Nation:

Enhanced Homepage Messaging

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia
  • CTAs or call to action on your homepage will drive visitors to become more interested to see more information and will help direct them towards the initial stage of the buyer’s journey, emphasized by Startup Nation.  
  • Also, flaunt some sticky posts that highlights your best content and add some must-read sections of your best content that can be easily read by visitors.

Related: Dummy’s Guide for Content Marketing

Employ Effective Re-targeting Techniques

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia
  • The re-targeting technique will allow you to get back to website visitors and turn them into possible qualified leads.
  • Another re-marketing tool is Google Adwords – enables you to show your ads  to those who visited your website. Learn how to re-engage with warm prospects who have gone cold

Download Digital Marketing Statistics 2017 here!


Make Your Opt-In Irresistible

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia
  • Design a unique offer that is compelling enough for visitors to give up their email address in exchange of your opt-in offer.
  • Also, be mindful of your target’s needs. Give them offers that will address their most common pain point. You may employ a free AdWords GRader like WordSteam.

Related: The 7 Must-Haves Enhancement of a Business Website

Test and Re-Test

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia
  • One tactic may work best at the start but less after some time. Note and keep best practices but feel free to tweak some points along the way.
  • Compare and contrast your headlines, messaging, button copy, image and other elements.

Evaluate and Nurture Leads

Growth Hacking Lead Generation Tips for Businesses in Australia
  • A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is an essential tool in keeping track information and nurturing leads but if your marketing budget won’t permit a purchase yet, an excel sheet will do for the meantime.
  • Develop a lead scoring criteria that will evaluate your leads of who the ideal customers would be. Identify if your prospect is worth pursuing.

Another set of growth hacking tips are from Neil Patel, Here are Lead Generation Hacks that Will Grow Your Leads By 113%:

  • Link Webinars In Your Content – webinars are effective, low-cost tools to get your message in front of your audience and generate good number of qualified leads. Link your content directly to your webinar as 52% of marketers believe that webinars and seminars are the most effective methods for generating targeted leads. tweet this!
  • Use Google as your Log In – create a simple sign-up flow for your customers via Google. Take for example SugarCRM and Trello; Flickr via Yahoo, Pinterest and Vimeo via Facebook.
  • Separate you lead generation team from your sales team – acknowledge each team’s forte and let them focus and succeed on it.  

The world of lead generation keeps evolving and change is inevitable in many aspects of the matter. One can shop many different, new tactics to grow their business but not all would work best at all times as a load of these tricks may just be be overwhelming. So do a careful study of what your business requires and take things one at a time.

Get our FREE sample telemarketing scripts for All Industry types. This includes scripts for appointment setting, event telemarketing, and data profiling: