How Low Tech Lead Tracking Can Save Your Hide During Economic Downturn

Since my earliest days as a Virtual Assistant and today as an Internet Marketing Consultant, I’ve saved every email inquiry that has come through my inbox. Whether through my website contact form or by way of direct email, I diligently file each one into a catch all folder named “Marketing Leads.” I don’t use expensive customer management software to organize this information, and maybe one day I will. I just dump the information into an Excel spreadsheet with columns set up to organize the data. It’s a low tech way to gather what I consider invaluable marketing intelligence. Too bad I’ve been leaving money on the table for the last three months.

How I Discovered the Error in My Lead Management Ways

My Virtual Assistant has been helping me with the long overdue process of culling and organizing the information contained within the hundreds of emails dumped into my Marketing Leads folder. During the process, she noticed something had changed, something much more critical to lead conversion than I realized.

Turns Out I Had Swapped Personalization for Hyper Efficiency

And from what I can tell, it’s cost me a pretty penny. My VA observed that, starting in August, how I was responding to website inquiries and other types of leads (referrals, etc.) had changed dramatically. In the “old days” I tended to be quite the chat monster with each new prospect. Even if the chat was via email, I would spend more than a few sentences getting to know my online leads, from sussing out their comfort level with various aspects of online marketing to gleaning some personal details like where they lived or how long they had been in business.

In my drive to be more “productive” I began having my VA respond directly to many of the inquiries by sending said prospect one of my client intake questionnaires. No small talk. No honeymoon. Too bad I wasn’t thinking about how a questionnaire–in the form of an attachment–could be interpreted as asking for the business without first saying a proverbial “Hi, how are you? What’s going on in your life that made you want to contact me?”

I must be increasingly unaware of myself in these hectic times of raising 2 small children and supporting a growing online business. Because for the past few months I’ve been (stupidly) asking myself “Why aren’t I converting inquiries like I used to?” Instead of turning to the very accurate historical record contained in my Marketing Leads email folder, I threw up my hands and assumed it must be the economic downturn that is scaring people off. I didn’t like it and felt I should perhaps rethink my entire marketing strategy.

In Reality My New and “Improved” Lead Response Style Was Too Icy

This is, ironically, quite the opposite of what might be needed in times of economic certainty. If anything, prospective B2B clients need additional warming up, not a form to fill out before they’ve had a chance to get to know me. They felt left out in the cold, and I might have remained completely in the dark if it not for my low tech lead tracking … and rather insightful Virtual Assistant.

Lesson learned. Now before you forget, create a Marketing Leads folder in your email inbox right now. Even if you don’t have a Virtual Assistant to extract and organize the data yet, you will have no excuse for not knowing how your responses to prospective customers are impacting your lead conversion rates. Because in a crisis–perceived, real or somewhere in between–it’s often the little things that make all the difference.

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Special thanks to my Details Diva, Ruth Martin of Maplewood VA for having the courage to help me see myself more clearly.