What’s the worst thing you can say to a prospective customer?

One site has listed The 5 Worst Lead Generation Conversation Openers. They are:

1. How are you today?
2. I’m not selling anything
3. Do you have a few minutes?
4. I know your busy but…
5. You don’t know me but…

The reason behind their picks can be found here. What it boils down to is those phrases have become overused. They’re common enough that people know you’re trying to sell them something when you use them. In short, salespeople that use these phrases are being lazy.

Websites are no different. First impressions are critical to retaining visitors and funneling them through the process of becoming a lead. If visitors aren’t engaged of otherwise feel your site has the information they’re looking for in the first minute, they’ll be off to competitor’s site.

Fortunately there are three things you can do to ensure your website doesn’t turn off customers before they know what you’re selling.

1. Talk to your audience. Are you using key words and phrases that target audience’s wants and needs? Does your website resonate with them or does it contain common, everyday words and images that make it feel tired and worn?

2. Give them multiple ways to learn about your company, products, and services. Some people respond to the written word while others prefer something visual to watch. Unless you have a very specialized audience having multiple ways to engage them is probably ideal.

3. Give them multiple contact options. Just like people feel uncomforatble being approached by a salesperson (I’m one of those people), some people would prefer to have other ways of making initial contact. Make sure your site has email (my preference), chat, and other options that your visitors might feel more comfortable using. And then make sure they’re easy for visitors to find.

Websites are 24/7 selling machines. The key is to make your site relevant and interesting so when potential customers arrive, they don’t feel like they’re experiencing the same old thing.  

At Sapha, we like to do things differently – including webinars.

This month we’ll be launching the first of a series of Sales and Lead Generation Success Webinars. It will take place Thursday, June 26 at 1:00 p.m. EDT (11:00 a.m. PDT).

This first thing you might notice about the webinar is that it’s 30 minutes instead of an hour. We know you’re busy, that’s why we’ve limited the webinar to 30 minutes. We’re going to pack it in with simple but sophisticated online marketing practices that can help your generate quality leads.

Second, instead of tooting our own horn and products, we’re going to bring in experts in the field of marketing and lead generation so you can get practical but valuable advice from third-party experts. This month you’ll hear from Curt Porritt, Sr. VP of Marketing for MasterControl, a 18-year marketing veteran. Mr. Porritt will talk about what he looks for when generating more website traffic, increasing conversion rates, and monitoring sales pipeline efficiency.

We hope you’ll join us for the first in these valuable and informative webinars.

You can register for the webinar here.

Last week I wrote about a local carnival I attended and the tactics used by three vendors to attract people to their booth. Today I’ll follow up with how successful the three vendors felt their tactics were in generating leads.

The dentist office that was handing out balloons and toothbrushes had no formal way of taking a person’s information. The woman who was running things said their primary purpose of the booth was brand awareness since they were a new dental office in town. However, she did show me a list that contained half dozen names of people who were looking for a new dentist that she would follow up with to set future appointments. She seemed happy with these results. The only thing she said she would do differently would be to offer people something, aside from their current giveaways, with the office’s contact information.

The insurance agent that was offering a drawing for a gas card was happy with his giveaway was generating. With gas approaching $4 a gallon, his gas card offer was particularly attractive to attendees. The insurance agent told me about one to two percent of the leads generated at an event like a carnival turned into clients. Though he wouldn’t know for about a month exactly how successful this particular booth had been, he said the gas card was his most successful lead generation offer to date and he already had more leads than he had last year. (The carnival was scheduled to run for another day when I talked to him.)

The preschool seemed to have the most success in getting not only qualified leads but customers. By specifically targeting parents with children, one of the women running the preschool booth said they had already enrolled twenty children into their fall program and had about the same number of qualified parents leads to follow up with next week. Aside from word-of-mouth referrals, the carnival was her most successful method of generating new business “because there were so many parents walking around with preschool-aged children.”

So what can their experiences teach us about lead generation?

Three things stood out:

1)      Always have a way for people to leave their contact information.

2)      Have the right offer to incentivize people to learn more about your product or services.

3)      Connect with your target audience.

It’s good advice whether you’re generating leads through your website or at a carnival booth.

Ever wonder what the World Wide Web would look like if you could put faces and booths behind all the websites?

I think it would look something like a carnival.

You’d have a section for games and activities, music performances, educational demonstrations, and businesses looking to sell products or generate leads. And don’t forget all the social networking going on as people talk to neighbors, friends, and acquaintances they see.

And, like websites, the vendors use various methods of luring people into their booth to sell products or generate a lead.

I thought about this last night when I attended my city’s annual celebration which includes a carnival in a nearby park. Each year the carnival’s popularity has increased and so have the number of vendors. Where three years ago there may have been 20-30 businesses vying for attention, this year there are more than 60. While some venders were there to sell goods such as beauty supplies, books, or scrapbooking material, most businesses were looking for leads including insurance agencies, dental offices, and the National Guard.

What particularly intrigued me was what various venders were doing to attract people to their booths in the hope of generating leads. Like a website, if no one is coming to your booth, you’re not going to generate many leads. At the carnival, some booths had lines of people while others were practically empty. Those that had lines of people were generally giving something away to people.

The most popular one seemed to be a dentist’s office that was offering balloons with their logos on it and a free toothbrush for kids if they would watch a 30 second demonstration about brushing their teeth. Yet I didn’t see any attempt by the workers to capture the information of anyone coming to the booth.

Another popular booth was an insurance agency. They were offering a free $200 gas card. People could either slip a business card into a bowl or fill out a short entry for to qualify. And though there were a lot of people entering the drawing, I wondered how qualified all these leads really were.

The booth that had the most targeted lead generation was for a local pre-school. Though they didn’t have a drawing or giveaways, someone in the booth would approach a parent who had pre-school aged kids with them and hand them a flier and engage them in conversation about their kids.

So how successful did those running the booths find their lead generation tactics?

Next week I’ll write about what I learned from talking with those running the booth about how successful they thought their booths were in generating quality leads and future business.

I found a useful website conversion calculator that has a more performance-based metrics than other conversion calculators. This website asks for financial inputs such as cost of goods sold and gross margin so you can determine cost per visitor, cost per action (CPA), ROI, and return on advertising spending.

As you proceed through the different steps, it also calculates your target cost per visitor, cost per click breakeven point, and allows you to perform a What-If analysis so you can see what your data would look like if your conversion rate changed.

The bottom line? Even small increases in website conversion rates can dramatically increase an organization’s revenue.

You can find the calculator here.