A recently released business survey reveals frustration as 65 percent of respondents claim an inability to consistently follow up with sales leads as the top concern.
ConnectIT
21-May-2008
Small businesses say following up leads biggest failure in marketing efforts by Liam Lahey
Surveying the landscape of small businesses (SBs) across the U.S. and amid concerns over the need to grow sales while reducing expenses, SB owners say the No. 1 frustration they face daily when it comes to sales and marketing is the inability to consistently follow up with prospects.
In a survey of entrepreneurs across the U.S. conducted by SB marketing automation software provider Infusionsoft, 65 percent of SB owners cited an inability to consistently and efficiently follow up with leads as the top concern.
The survey also indicated a growing frustration among SB owners and marketers with closing an immediate sale, suggesting that the nurturing process is being overlooked and as a result, leads are left idle.
"These findings are telling for understanding the challenges a small business owner faces," said Clate Mask, president and CEO, Infusionsoft. "Small business owners are trying to figure out how to make their marketing more effective amid the reality of smaller marketing budgets, limited time to manage campaigns, smaller organizational infrastructure, and longer to-do lists. So these results are eye-opening to understand just how simple, yet real their daily frustrations are with converting more leads into sales."
The report highlighted SBs want to send more email to customers and prospects, capture information from Web visitors, prospects, and then automatically follow up with those people.
The survey asked SB owners across the country to choose their top marketing-related issues from a list and then rank them in order of importance, recording results from 1,000 respondents. The following is a list of the top 10 marketing-related frustrations as cited by respondents in Infusionsoft's "2008 U.S. Small Business Marketing Frustration Survey":
- Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently;
- Can't properly track and manage prospects and customers;
- Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts;
- Poor email deliverability;
- Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation;
- Can't track sales activity;
- Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems;
- Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff;
- Too difficult to manually manage multi-channel campaigns;
- One-dimensional marketing.
Infusionsoft conducted the survey via email and phone to organizations with two to100 employees from January 1st through to April 30, 2008.
Automation of marketing and processes enables the small business to convert more leads into customers, grow the business without the need to grow staff, and increase sales from existing customers, the company said.
"I agree with their findings that SB's face immense challenges when it comes to following up on leads," said Michelle Warren, senior IT analyst, The Info-Tech Research Group. "This is a challenge they face continuously -- how to balance customer (and growth) demands with their workforce (which tends to remain the same size). Employees and managers often find it frustrating to continually try to maximize opportunities while dealing with a slim workforce."
Technological solutions, specifically software applications, offer some interesting and efficient ways to address these concerns, and to improve productivity; from sales to marketing to production.
Warren added there are three challenges that SBs face when contemplating a new tech solution, however. One is cost, because everything boils down to the bottom line. The second is training and the third has to do with the actual purchasing process. "These factors way in when making the decision," she said.
ConnectIT is a publication of Integratedmar.com
