There is, there has been for some time, this impending sense of urgency by businesses, large and small, to get a significant online presence. Dreamy photo-filled Insta accounts, cliched posts with overused inspirational LinkedIn messages and thousands of rands pissed down the drain on social media and Google ads that deliver zero Rands to the bottom line.

The problem is not the ads, nor the platform it’s probably not even the fault of the designers and content creators you employ. 

Most businesses, once sold on the idea of spending money on advertising in the first place, will spend considerable time and effort on crafting the best ad campaign they can afford. In some cases large budgets will be handed over, albeit reluctantly to the ad agency or design team to get high-quality imagery and video, to tell the business’s story, to lay bare your “why”. (another terribly overused cliche- thanx  Simon!)

All this money invariably leads to interested potential customers engaging with the company, asking questions about the product or service or requesting pricing information. Exactly as scripted by the creative teams behind the campaign.

And that is where it all comes crashing down. 

This is where so many businesses go horribly wrong. Having spent a large sum on lead acquisitions, those leads are bludgeoned to death by untrained, unhelpful and down right useless internal sales teams who could not care less what that lead cost to acquire and certainly don’t appear to want to help the inquirer. 

It is truly astounding to see this happen repeatedly in both large and small businesses. The sales teams do not understand how to correctly guide a genuine sales lead from a simple enquiry to a completed sale. Leads are wasted and the prospect buys the same product or service from the competitor who took time to answer their questions satisfactorily.

“No sorry” should be banned from all sales team lists of potential responses to potential customers. Never, ever say “no..” or “we can’t..” unless of course, the lead was completely unrelated to the product or service offered.

By simply replacing a short negative response with an alternative you keep the communication open and get to find out more about the customer and what it is they actually need.

Instead of “sorry we don’t do that” try “We offer this option which is very similar to…” or instead of “sorry, we don’t have stock” try “Stock will be arriving on…can I send you the item when it arrives?” , Hopefully, by keeping communication lines open you will find out that you do have a viable solution that could suit their requirements.

Leads are expensive to acquire, don’t entrust them to a weak team!