How To Close More Internet Leads
It’s no secret that Internet leads can be expensive for home improvement contractors. And a low sales closing rate turns expensive marketing into super expensive marketing. After all, getting someone to love what you sell is the easy part. Getting them to buy? Well, that’s another story.
You can have the best company with the best products and the best installation process, but if the customer doesn’t think it’s affordable, then you’re probably leaving their home without a sale. And that lost opportunity really hurts your bottom line.
From my many years of selling home improvements at the kitchen table, and then being the finance manager for one of the largest home improvement companies in the country, I’ve learned that there are a few marketing levers businesses can pull that can make a massive impact on your sales results.
Simple Sales Math for Web Leads
Let’s say you buy 100 web leads for $100 each, and you issue 30 of them into appointments. The 100 leads cost you $10,000, but each appointment costs you $333. Not too bad.
If your sales team runs those 30 appointments and closes 20% of them (six sales) with an average job size of $8,000, that’s $48,000 in revenue with a marketing cost of 20.8%. Ouch. Add sales commission, labor, and materials and you might be upside down on those jobs.
But what if you could close 30% of those leads with a $10,000 average job size? That’d be $90,000 in revenue and an 11% marketing cost from the same campaign. That’s a much better financial picture. And here’s how you can make it happen.
1. Include a Free Gift with Purchase
A free promotional item can help get you in the door and help you close the deal. That might be something like a new grill for a customer who hires you to build a deck, or something as simple as an Amazon gift card for anyone who invests in a project with you. Any extra perk like that can help you close a few more sales than you would have without it.
2. Promote Payment Options
Even if a customer can afford to pay now, it doesn’t mean that they want to. No payments and no interest for 12 months is very appealing and will often lead to a larger job size.
For those who won’t be able to pay the balance off within the year, you’ll want to have a low monthly payment option that lasts for the life of the loan. Some homeowners will also respond to a special availability interest rate.
Include these financing offers in your marketing copy to enhance your ability to generate Internet leads.
3. Give Customers FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
The law of scarcity is a powerful persuasion tool. Running short-term flash sales or limited-time offers drives urgency. Give your customers a reason to call and say “yes” today. This will result in an uptick in your sales closing rate.
4. Stack the Deck
Want an offer that’s nearly impossible to pass up? Combine everything listed above.
Let customers know that they’ll get a free gift if—and only if—they purchase by a specific date. Plus, give them the opportunity to take advantage of a temporary financing offer. This could even be a hybrid financing offer where a customer with good credit can benefit from no payments and no interest for 12 months, then make low monthly payments thereafter.
Finally, to create urgency, your marketing copy should alert prospects that the offers are only available to a select number of customers who commit by a certain date.
The best advice I can give regarding lead generation comes down to mindset, regardless of the lead source. Teach and have a mindset that every lead is sacred and empower your sales team with the right tools so they can be heroes to their customers.
